Life Begins

Yesterday I was forty. It didn’t feel particularly different from being 39 and 363 days to be honest (but thanks for asking, everyone!) Luckily, I had a fantastic day, probably the best birthday ever. In fact, if people who make slightly ropey cooking lager in green cans had organised my birthday, it would probably have looked something like this…

I had (another) lie-in. I’m beginning to wonder whether this blog should be re-named “Life Begins at 10.30am”. Then I jumped on the train and tube to North Greenwich to meet Tom, his Aunt and his friend and we went to see the ATP Tour Tennis Finals at the O2 Arena. Very impressive it was too. I even remembered to eat an early lunch on the way there so that I didn’t have to spend anything on the over-priced food and drink once we were inside. We saw a doubles and a singles match and both went the distance, so we definitely got our money’s worth. It’s always astonishing to watch live professional sport, particularly when you’ve had a go at it. It’s a totally different game, and much quicker and more skilful than it looks on the telly.

As we left my eye was drawn away from the large crowds heading for the tube and towards the signs saying “boats back to central London”. I persuaded Tom and his mate (who’s name escapes me, sorry) to get on the Thames Clipper back to London Bridge (£3.55 if you’ve already got a Travelcard - bargain!) It was dark by this time and we zoomed along and stopped at a lit up Greenwich, Canary Wharf and many more lit up bits of London. Beautiful. We stood at the back, just over the yellow line and next to the sign saying “don’t stand over the yellow line” and it felt wonderful having the wind and spray on our faces, particularly having been inside for a few hours. As Tom said, “why would you get on a boat and then sit inside?”

After I got home I just about had time to sit down and answer the many Facebook messages saying Happy Birthday (thankyou everyone - isn’t Facebook great for that?) and then I grabbed my guitar and headed off to The Green Dragon for the slightly unnerving experience of playing at my own show: Freedom of Expression. It’s diffcult to say how the actual gig went, but it was great to see so many people there and to have Simon there onstage for all sorts of reasons, reassurance not being the least of those. The marvellous MJ Hibbett compered to leave me free to concentrate on worrying about my own performance (average, I’m afraid - Simon was great though) and he’s blogged about the evening in general so I’ll point you to his description: here it is!

Jenny had made a cake, but I was too discombobulated to actually eat any. There might be some left later tonight, I’m not sure. I had a final birthday beer with Dr Strange, Jenny and regular Freedom of Expressionist Graham and then we headed home. A great day. Thank you to everyone who contributed at any point during it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Personal, Music, Tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.