Birthday Dread

It's December the 15th. Happy Birthday Lulu!

In 3 days time, it will be my brother's birthday and in 5, I will be 28, pushing 30 (according to Jaime). Even Ryan Giggs is 36 going 37.

We are at an age, where we look forward less and less to each successive birthday. Each additional candle on the cake fills me with dread.

It worries me. I cannot help it, even if there is no salve for it. I am worried that my youth and energy will fade before I have accomplished my dreams.


“I am an old woman now. I am old and useless. I’ve pondered these things all my life. My flesh is not what it was, and neither are my bones. When I was young my soul seemed to be the same thing as my body. There didn’t seem to be any difference, I remember that. When I needed to climb some steps, my legs just climbed, and that was all there was to it. My mind and my muscles were all one. Now when I want to climb some steps I look down at my feet and say, ‘Move, in the name of saint Gerasimos, move!’ and slowly they move, and then I stop to draw breath, and my lungs feel hard and dry, and I feel my heart fluttering in vain like the last poor starving butterfly, and this is how I have come to know in my own way that there is a soul who is not the body, but lives inside it.”

Louis De Bernieres, Birds without Wings.