Birthday Blues

Well, the end of another working week is near and my odometer of life has also clicked round to another digit. Forty two years......and counting.

My best moment of the week was when someone at work asked my age and didn’t believe I was that old, which in a backhanded way was a compliment I suppose.

I don’t tend to celebrate my birthday these days, in fact not for a long time really. It’s just another day, but people insist on buying me cake and sending me cards with footballs on them. I’m forty bloody two for god sake, I don’t play with footballs anymore, I don’t go fishing and I’m never going to have a red sports car either. The one apt card I received just had a picture of a large glass of beer on it, now that I can relate to.

I am the proverbial grumpy old git these days. Everything annoys me, people irritate me and I just don’t seem to have the enthusiasm for “fun”.

I wish life was a bundle of laughs, but it’s not. It’s bills, it’s hassle from work, it’s having to walk the dog when I just want to read the paper, it’s dealing with a pedantic autistic 9 year old, a “Dad, Can I have..” 12 year old and a PMT laden 40 year old.

Sometimes I just want them to leave me alone. Patience is not my virtue and I guess I have become increasingly less tolerant of repetitive situations and maybe just a bit fed up with life.

Then, sometimes I have a moment of clarity and I feel incredibly guilty for being angry at them. I realise I should be grateful for still having the opportunity to be on this planet and I remind myself that my brother died at the age of 21. I have been here twice as long as he got to be, and yet here I am moaning and groaning about how crap everything is.

When he died, I was 26 and actually used that as a driver for myself to live my life in a better, more positive way and this worked for a while. Somewhere along the way, this mantra has been lost and gradually overtaken by frustration and apathy.

I can’t foresee myself ever being entirely happy with the cards I’ve been dealt, but I need to find some way to appreciate life a bit more. Perhaps I need more “me” time or a change of scenery now and then. Perhaps I just need to man up and stop feeling sorry for myself.

Perhaps, I need to start celebrating birthdays properly and start having some “fun”.

Rain

It never rains but it pours. In fact, it seems to have been pouring down here for weeks and I am becoming distinctively fed up with it.

We are obsessed with the weather in this country at the best of times, but rain brings an aura of emotive, depressing drudgery with it. This is summer, I should be basking in vitamin D loaded sunshine to cheer me up and prevent me developing rickets, but alas, it is not to be. It’s wet, miserable and I’m even inadvertently humming tunes about the rain. I haven’t quite resorted to umbrella swirling, Gene Kelly style singing in the rain yet but it’s not far off.

The Who tell us “Only love can make it rain” while Prince insists rain is purple and only wants to see us bathing in it. The great Echo & The Bunnymen believe “your hurricanes have brought down this ocean rain” and even The Beatles who probably started the whole rain thing “run and hide their heads” if it comes.

Bono screams its “raining, raining in the heart” towards the end of One Tree hill and even Madonna feels it on her finger tips and hears it on the window pane.

Adele more recently wanted to set fire to it, and I’d like to do that too, at least we would get some heat for a bit. However, The Cult confirm “here comes the rain, here she comes again” so there really is no escape and they love it too apparantley.

Actually so do the good old boys from the Alarm who also love to feel it in the summer time. Travis, however pose the rhetorical “Why does it always rain on me?”

In my ramblings of rain soaked desperation, that’s actually quite a good little play list and has cheered me up no end. I think to finish it off I will add my beloved elbow’s Great Expectations which is a most beautiful song and starts off with the very apt “and if it rains all day, call on you, I’ll call on you like I used to. Slide down beside you and wrap you in stories, tailored entirely for you….”

If you are fed up with the rain, or looking for a tune or two, go listen to these

The Who – Love, Reign O’er Me

Prince - Purple Rain
Echo & the Bunnymen – Ocean Rain
The Beatles – Rain
U2 – One Tree Hill
Madonna – Rain
Adele – Set Fire to The Rain
The Cult – Rain
The Alarm – Rain in The Summer Time
Travis – Why Does it Always rain on Me?
Elbow – Great Expectations