Another year older.

Another year older.

There must come a point in our lives when our birthday fails to capture your imagination in the way it might have done 20 or 30 years ago. It just seems like the passing of another year, that moment of transition when the significance of the day doesn't quite hold the same fascination that it should. Still, it'll be lovely to see my loving and supportive family and tonight a quiet Shabbat evening with very close family will have a special resonance.

Long gone though are those days of youthful merriment when all of your school friends or people you grew up would lavish you with presents and games thickly wrapped in veritable rainforests of paper whereupon mum and dad would rush into the living room, gather up all of your mates and decide quite emphatically that this would be the ideal moment to play Pass the Parcel or Musical Chairs.

Then the ropiest of record players would boom out of the tiniest of speakers and a spontaneous outburst of raucous laughter and ear splitting screaming would follow almost naturally. All of the kids would frantically scramble around for the most advantageous position equipped with nothing more than an uncontrollable urge to create merry hell and havoc. Was it always the way with children? They love to be the centre of the attention, hogging the limelight, good naturedly excitable but still a lovable nuisance.

But now at the ripe old age of 56 these are the years of proud parenthood, reflecting fondly on those halcyon days when we were kids, caught up in the throes of joyful curiosity and discovery, when life was all about blowing out candles on birthday cakes and the children's entertainer would blow up balloons, pulling rabbits out of  hats, performing yet another set of magic tricks and then producing silk handkerchiefs out of nothing. Then if you came from Kensington and Chelsea you would probably get tea and scones with tiny sandwiches shaped in small triangles. Oh for the joys of the privileged classes.

Nowadays birthdays are much more elaborate occasions than perhaps they used to be. Now of course the children of today not only expect better looking presents they will undoubtedly demand them. In our day it was the traditional Lego or Meccano, that wonderfully intriguing mix of coloured bricks and in later years, electrical mechanisms that would light up without any prompting.

In the earliest of years it was the good old fashioned, tried and trusted box set of clay or plasticine followed later on in life with the ingenious Etch A Sketch, an object which would immeasurably enhance your artistic capabilities to such a point that some of us may have thought that by our eighth birthday we must have felt that we were ready to become accomplished graphic designers.

Then we were confronted with Ker Plunk and Frustration which in their varying ways were solely designed to send us into a mild state of panic, bewildered children who didn't quite know what we were supposed to do with such strange kids toys.

 Frustration was fun in its way but hardly intellectually stimulating in as much that you weren't sure why you were given these quaint looking counters and then clearly instructed to move those counters around a plastic board. Then by some miracle of science you would be eventually acclaimed as winner if you'd managed to land all of the said counters in a straight row, the number six taking a prominent role in your victory.

Ker Plunk seemed to pass me by but having been subjected to innumerably repetitive TV advertising campaigns at roughly this time of the year, it still seems to be shrouded in the thick mists of mystery that never really lifted. What is this weird piece of plastic with miniature slides or chutes where weird and wonderful things happen when sticks are withdrawn from the heat of action and general mayhem ensues?

Now of course maturity and adulthood mellows the soul. Books have always been an enduring source of pleasure and the acquisition of book tokens or money for books has never lost that very personal  appeal. Music also provides something that is uplifting and although vinyl is no longer as accessible as it used to be and Spotify seems to be the only resource for those with a musical ear, I can though still find great delight in the You Tube platform.

The mind travels back blissfully to my barmitzvah when the entire family would surround you with those pre- birthday surprises that still send a tickle of amusement through your body. What you have to remember here is that it was 1975, the economy was in a familiar state of stagnant meltdown and all Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister could do was smoke his comforting pipe or turn up devotedly to his beloved hometown football club Huddersfield Town every so often.

Meanwhile back in downtown Ilford, Essex some of us were reciting our barmitzvah piece on the Saturday morning before raving the day away on the Sunday in frilly ruffed shirts, platform shoes and drainpipe trousers. It was a seminal moment in my young life and one of those formidable rites of passage when yours truly would have to make the most awkward adjustment to adolescence.

Then the barrage of presents came winging their way towards me unexpectedly and totally without any consultation or any kind of real understanding of what it all meant. Suddenly there were hundreds of fountain pens, the new and very voguish calculators and for whatever reason, clothes valets. At this point something inside me wanted to complain and complain vehemently.

Still, years later you begin to look back on special anniversaries or birthdays with a wistful smile and a sense that it was indeed just a passing phase. Birthdays are now numerical landmarks rather than vitally important excuses for wild parties and loads of booze. Birthdays are now that rather charming  set of ornaments on your mantelpiece, that distant throwback to a simpler time when we could once again jump onto our bikes, hurtle around street corners with gaping red bruises on our knees and then do the same thing all over the time. Birthdays- how we long for them and may the enjoyment they've always brought never dim. Happy Birthday me!