The Fourth Decade

Welcome back to DraMattics, yes I’m sorry I’ve left you in the dark for a month. But, whilst it may sound as unbelievable as James Murdoch’s testimony at the Leveson inquiry, I have actually had a life for the last few weeks. You’ve probably noticed I have also made a few changes to the layout of the blog, I hope you like it. For some reason I thought the picture was appropriate. I choose to imagine the little girl in the raincoat is crying, I don’t know why, but somehow it works. For those of you following the blog by e-mail update, you probably won’t be able to see the new blog format, sorry but you are missing out – it’s actually a picture of Tulisa’s naked breasts. I say missing out, you’ve probably seen them before, if you’ve used the internet.

Enough discussion of Tulisa’s breasts, time instead to talk about what I’ve been up to whilst you’ve been sitting at your computer crying waiting for this blog to update. Well friends I have turned the ripe old age of thirty. Yes who’d have thought? Certainly not my mirror. Which currently is estimating my age, to be the average age of items shown on the Antiques Roadshow. Regular readers of blog, familiar with my tone being much like that of Victor Meldrew crossed with an angry goose, will expect me to have had a miserable 30^th birthday. Well in fact I had a good birthday, so there! You didn’t expect that did you?

The actual day was Easter Saturday, which was a little inconvenient as everyone tends to be busy across the Easter weekend. But it did give me the opportunity to spend the day itself with my family. Who organised this lovely birthday cake for me:

I was also lucky enough to receive a shout-out on Graham Norton’s radio show, organised by my flatmate. Despite actually working in the media industry I still found this deeply exciting, as if all the other listeners were wishing me a happy birthday, instead of ignoring it and sipping coffee like I do when I’m listening and hear other birthday messages. Anyway I played the whole thing very cool, and absolutely didn’t record the shout-out on my computer so I can play it back again and again. No I definitely did not do that.

The rest of the day was spent with my Dad constantly reminding me I was now thirty. I couldn’t work out if this was his way of getting his own back for all the times I called him “old” as a child, or just the worry dawning on him that he was now old enough to have a fathered a thirty year-old child. In hindsight the crying should have given away it was the latter option.

The next Saturday saw me have a birthday party, horray if you came, boo if you didn’t come and awkward if you’re reading this and weren’t invited. I blame Facebook which manages to have a message delivery system about twice as inefficient as Royal Mail, admittedly with a slight smaller queue than in the Post Office. Seriously where do those lost Facebook messages go? Maybe one day they will turn up and I’ll find out I missed my own wedding or something?

I should of course say thanks to my friends who made me wear this “30” balloon around my arm for the whole evening, like a modern day slave labourer’s ball-and-chain.

Effectively it’s like having a giant advertising hoarding strapped to you saying “Too old to date”, which you then have to take around on the Underground. This resulted in one memorable exchange on the way home with two rather drunken women, who first of all asked “Whose birthday is it?”. I resisted the urge to reply “Me, you daft cows. That’s why I’m holding the balloon.”. After explaining it was my birthday one of the women then went onto then say “Oh I just turned 30 myself, it’s really awful isn’t it?! Are you having a good night?”. To which I replied “I was…”.

I was then asked “Are you the oldest person in your group?”. “Do I look the oldest?”, I said. “Yes” came the reply. It was at that point when I pushed them under the train, so sincere apologies if your Northern line service was held up on Saturday 14^th of April. It was necessary.

I was lucky enough to receive quite a few birthday cards:

Thanks so much everyone who sent me one, sadly if I added up all the 30’s listed on the cards, I’d have an age of about 1,200. Fortunately no one was stupid enough to send me a “With Deepest Sympathy” card, probably realising that had they done so their nearest and dearest would be receiving similar cards very soon. I should at this point show you a card made by graphic designer friend, which is amazing:

So there you go, shocking as it seems I’ve actually written a happy blog – broadly. Bet you’re surprised.

Has anything changed since turning 30? Well not really, my face doesn’t seem to need more ironing than it already did, and no vital limbs have fallen off or anything. I have made a few life changes, I’ve lost three and a half  kilograms on a diet and have started driving lessons. Yes clear the streets of Clapham, I am learning to drive – more on that in a few weeks’ time (provided no one, especially me, dies in the process).

Is there anything I regret not doing before turning 30? Well veteran readers will remember that back in September I went through a list of 30 things I was “supposed” to have done before turning thirty:

30 Reasons to take Cyanide

And that I had achieved six of these things, I still have achieved six of these things. And do you know what? I don’t care. They are all stupid things I don’t wish I’d done anyway. Like having a meaningful relationship. Who wants to do that? I guess if I was to list one regret over the last thirty years, then it would probably be not having assassinated Katie Price. I’ve had two distinct opportunities to do this neither one I have taken up and I feel for the good of humanity I should have.

The first was when I interviewed her at the Brit Awards back when I was making student television. It was just after she launched her bid to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, you may remember her being dressed in a very tight pink PVC suit whilst heavily pregnant:

Apologies for sharing that photo with you. I asked her to tell me something about her Eurovision entry, which she said she would if I promised to vote for her in the UK selection process. I duly promised her my vote, and she then told me nothing. Well I got the last laugh bitch, because guess what? I didn’t vote for you. Hahahahahahahahahaha!

The second time was when I was working at The London Studios, ITV’s Southbank Headquarters, in an adjacent studio she was filming some tedious Katie & Peter-esque chat show for that highbrow channel, and home of thought provoking documentary ITV2. Humorously the show was cancelled a few episodes before the end of its run because Katie Price had booked herself a plastic surgery session out of the country and therefore couldn’t attend the last few episodes of her own show. I’m not even making it up, that actually happened! My regret is I missed a perfectly good opportunity to run into the studio armed with a flamethrower and melt her breasts into molten plastic. I would like to take this moment to point out to any security services monitoring this blog, that I in no way encourage or endorsee any kind of terrorist activity. Though I suspect any court in the land would let me off, when they heard my motivation.

So there we go, thirty and happy(ish) and bar sharing the earth with Katie Price, I think I am happy with my achievements. I look forward to a stream of comments and replies telling me why I shouldn’t be happy!