Time Flight

I was in a training course the other week and the topic of Irish bank holidays arose (as it does) and someone asked when St Patrick’s Day is. Without a moments hesitation I spoke up, “17^th March”. One of my colleagues looked surprised and asked “How do you know that? Is it because of the Guinness?” I wasn’t sure what to make of this but I guess there was an assumption that I like the old black stuff to the extent that I would automatically know the hardest drinking of all the saints days, so I had to correct her, “No, it’s the day after my birthday”.

So, that means that in just over a week I have another birthday. When you are young birthdays are rare occasions that seem to take forever to come round, and your excitement is unbridled. When you are older they come round too often and serve as a constant reminder of your own mortality, that the clock is ticking and the cold embrace of the Grim Reaper is lurking behind every corner. Cheerful thought really.

This birthday I will be officially moving into my late 30s. I can’t really claim to be in my mid-thirties without stretching the rules a little, which I’m happy to do, but then I’ve reached the time of my life where I get confused about my age on a regular basis. The other day I was convinced I was 38, ageing myself by a couple of years. This never happened when I was young. I knew exactly how old I was and used to be most indignant if a family member didn’t know.

When I was at primary school there was a girl called Jane Hensall. She would take great delight in asking other kids “How old are you?” just so you could tell her and she would triumphantly announce “I’m older than you”, because she knew she was the oldest child in the school. I suspect she doesn’t do this now, although I would like to bump into her so I can do it right back at her. Yes, you’re older then me. In your face.

When you’re a child birthdays are exciting because, unlike the prescribed format of Christmas, it’s all about you and your wants and needs, to some extent at least. When I was 11 I had a party. I say party, a select bunch of six friends came round and were presented with my choice of food: popcorn, hot dogs, beef burgers and chips. It was quite a talking point and made a difference from the usual curled up sandwiches and Golden Wonder crisps at other kids parties.

Then there’s the cake. I know that at aged one I had a cake with chocolate buttons on it, but only because I’ve seen the photo of a chubby faced little Terry sat in his high chair staring hungrily at it. When I was 14 I had a TARDIS cake, which was a nice idea but I can still taste the blue icing over 20 years later. At 16 I seem to recall the cake I got resembled a book although most of the guests at that party were far too inebriated to notice. Seriously, a 16^th birthday in a Civic Centre hall next to the local park is a recipe for disaster. Everyone apart from me and my parents were blind drunk on cheap cider and one individual was even caught sniffing lighter fuel, which seems satisfyingly retro now. It all ended fine though. The bigger disaster was my dress sense at the time. In my defence it was 1990, the 1980s had only just ended but I guess that’s no excuse for a piano key shirt and a gold bow tie. There are photos but there's no chance I'm posting them here anytime soon.

When I turned 21 I had changed my mode of dress and was adorned from top to tail in black and, more importantly, had found alcohol and I spent most of the day in The Swan in Totton with my drinking partner, Ned. We entertained ourselves by repeatedly putting ‘Put yourself in my place’ by Kylie Minogue on the video jukebox. Can’t think why.

I ended that evening in a club below a pub in Southampton where I was summoned to the dance floor to dance to ‘Them girls’ by Zig & Zag, although I have no idea why this happened at all, like most of the things that happened in my early twenties.

My birthdays at university were always spent within a little pub called ‘The Vaults’ where much beer would be drunk, all manner of friends and associates would appear from the woodwork and one year some people even started climbing the walls. Again, I have no idea why.

My final birthday in Leicester whilst I lived there ended with the landlord setting a fire extinguisher off in my face, having just used it to clean up the toilet as some inconsiderate individual had redecorated it with the contents of their stomach. I can’t think who that might have been. I blame the tequila.

I think the peak of birthday madness occurred a couple of years later in Sheffield when I remember being made to drink a ‘dirty pint’ and then a load of bunny girls turned up. This was in a Wetherspoons on a Monday night. Don’t ask. I wouldn’t be able to remember even if you did.

In the intervening years the need to spend my birthday being the most drunk person in the pub has reduced somewhat, possibly because my brain had screamed “enough of the madness already!!!”.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a drink, and I also like going for a curry however now I like to book a table rather than stagger in just before midnight and it’s nice to be able to remember what I ate the morning after rather than walk past it on the pavement the next day.

The present Mrs Hayward gets quite giddy about birthdays, not just her own but mine as well. She happily wakes me up early to open my presents and cards despite the fact that I would be quite happy with a lie-in. She also got me a cake last year with big candles, one in the shape of a 3 and the other in a 6, and put them round the other way. How we laughed.

This year though I realise I’m reverting to childhood. It happens to all old people but it’s hit me early. On 16^th March we’re heading down to London, catching the tube over to Olympia and will be going to the Doctor Who Experience. I know, I’m 37, not 7.

Oh, but the 7 year old me would squee with excitement and be unable to sleep for weeks. Nowadays my lack of sleep isn’t caused by excitement, just too much caffeine and a weak bladder. Seriously though, I’ve been to half-arsed Doctor Who exhibitions before but this one is an experience, it’s all interactive and you get to fly in the TARDIS and everything.

More than that, they’ve got the fifth Doctor’s TARDIS. Yes, they’ve got the more recent models as well, but they’ve got the cream coloured one, with the proper roundels that Peter Davison used to set the controls of when I was knee high to a grasshopper, and I’ll remember my 8^th birthday all the way back in 1982 when he stood by that very console, that looked very futuristic at the time but now looks a little shabby with adult eyes, and watched the scanner as a space freighter blew up and he realised that his companion Adric had died on board, and there was nothing he could do.

Alright so when I got older I realised that Adric was a little twerp but at the time I sat in front of the TV as Peter Davison did his best pained look to camera and the credits rolled…..silently. I was sat on my own in the lounge clutching a glass of milk, and I cried quietly to myself, hoping my Dad wouldn’t notice. How could they do that to me, on my birthday as well?

Never mind, come the following week things had moved on and the Master has hatched another less than cunning plan that involved him disguising himself as somebody else and it was all forgotten about, more or less.

So I’ve come full circle. I have no plans to drink my bodyweight in ale, or to perv at Kylie Minogue in a state of undress, or barge into a curry house late on a Monday evening just as they were closing, or dance to a song performed by a couple of puppets, and there probably won’t be a ‘dirty pint’, a fire extinguisher, or any bunny girls.

I’m just going to go and look at some Daleks instead, and that’s a good thing. I think.