On birthdays past and present
It’s my thirty-eighth birthday, and I’m in Holland without the family, though had a really great time. You’d think that being of such advanced years, I’d recall many past birthdays, but only a few stick in my mind. Most notably, these were:
- 13/11/82: my sixteenth: I got laid. By a red-head.
- 13/11/84: my eighteenth: likewise, by Helen, of the fabulous figure.
- 13/11/87: my twenty-first, at university in Hull, when my brother and best mate Matt came to visit and we tried to drink 21 beers that day. I believe we succeeded, although were not pretty sights. I certainly recall proposing marriage in a crowded bar to a gorgeous Indian woman named Dhillum with the best breasts I had ever seen. She declined with a good deal more politeness than I deserved, give that we’d never spoken before, and I was slurring my words so much it took three attempts before any degree of coherence could be achieved.
- 13/11/91: my twenty-fifth when I woke up next to the barmaid from my local pub, and the listened to one of my presents: a CD of My Bloody Valentine’s "Loveless", one of my all-time top 5 albums.
- 13/11/93: in Istanbul, with Lucy, Yeşim and other colleagues. That night, I met Zeynab, my first muslim girlfriend, who was so gorgeous and intelligent she was breathtaking.
- 13/11/94: (See photo) In India, on the roof of a hostel in Sudder Street, Calcutta, smoking giggly weed and drinking Rosy Pelican beer. (I always swore I’d call a daughter of mine Rosy Pelican Lawson, but Nongyow vetoed that.)
- 13/11/95: in London: seduced by The Big Boss’s secretary, 10 years older than me and a busty Mauritian hindu. Hurrah!
- 13/11/96: in Bangkok; my first birthday with Nongyow and having recently had my diagnosis of a brain tumour retracted (though the next year revised to MS). Nongyow, me, Stephanie and Richie went to an enormous restaurant where the waiters came round on roller skates, and we gorged ourselves on seafood and Thai curry.
This birthday, on a trip round the Twente district of Holland with cool people, beer and some weed has proved pretty cool, too.
