37 Red Balloons.
Today’s my
thirty-seventh birthday and I don't want to worry anyone, but to
stay on track, I need to release my equivalent to Double Fantasy in three years' time.
This is another way of saying, “If I want to achieve as much as John Lennon did in his lifetime within the same time-frame, I need to get it all in before I turn forty in 2021; I’m nothing if not ambitious.
I didn’t sleep at all last night, which was nothing to do with my impending birthday, though as the hours crept by, I inevitably found myself pondering today’s milestone and what it means to me. It’s a strange one to reckon with as, while I’m under no illusion I’m old, the fact I’m edging dangerously close to the next biggie - my fortieth - is a concerning. The past decade has flown by in the blink of a crow’s-footed eye, so who’s to say the next ten years won’t too? Is my brain set to the wrong shutter-speed or did I black out for a while somewhere down the line?
This morning I had an answerphone message from my old flatmate Dave to wish me many happy returns. It sticks in my mind that when we first lived together, I was twenty-one and he was twenty-eight…and while I didn’t see him as old by any stretch of the imagination, at that particular point, his age seemed a long way off to me. Now I’m thirty-seven and he's forty-five; what happened there? I’ve always had plenty of actor friends who were older than me - it goes with the territory - but while I was once always the youngest person in the company, I’m now probably somewhere in the middle; I’m also three years away from Lennon’s age when he died and fifteen years older than Buddy Holly. It doesn’t bear too much consideration.
The other endlessly weird thing to note is the fact I share a birthday with Glyn, though I’m older by a year. Perhaps that’s why he hangs around with me: to make him feel better off by one.
This is another way of saying, “If I want to achieve as much as John Lennon did in his lifetime within the same time-frame, I need to get it all in before I turn forty in 2021; I’m nothing if not ambitious.
I didn’t sleep at all last night, which was nothing to do with my impending birthday, though as the hours crept by, I inevitably found myself pondering today’s milestone and what it means to me. It’s a strange one to reckon with as, while I’m under no illusion I’m old, the fact I’m edging dangerously close to the next biggie - my fortieth - is a concerning. The past decade has flown by in the blink of a crow’s-footed eye, so who’s to say the next ten years won’t too? Is my brain set to the wrong shutter-speed or did I black out for a while somewhere down the line?
This morning I had an answerphone message from my old flatmate Dave to wish me many happy returns. It sticks in my mind that when we first lived together, I was twenty-one and he was twenty-eight…and while I didn’t see him as old by any stretch of the imagination, at that particular point, his age seemed a long way off to me. Now I’m thirty-seven and he's forty-five; what happened there? I’ve always had plenty of actor friends who were older than me - it goes with the territory - but while I was once always the youngest person in the company, I’m now probably somewhere in the middle; I’m also three years away from Lennon’s age when he died and fifteen years older than Buddy Holly. It doesn’t bear too much consideration.
The other endlessly weird thing to note is the fact I share a birthday with Glyn, though I’m older by a year. Perhaps that’s why he hangs around with me: to make him feel better off by one.
