mostly david ephgrave

Fuck me, I'm forty. The fateful day. The milestone's significant and inevitably a moment for reflection. It seems like only yesterday I was celebrating my thirtieth while on tour in the Netherlands and suddenly I'm a step closer to what's commonly regarded as middle-age...if I'm not there already. And all those gits who say "Life begins at forty" are conspicuous in their absence. I may speak to Citizen's Advice about a recount. Joking aside, I see my fortieth as a positive chance to sink more comfortably into my skin. For much of my life, I questioned my self-worth to the point that it made me unwell. The events of my childhood scarred me mentally and left me riddled with self-doubt and ill-equipped for a happy adulthood. The kid I could have been was drowned out by the role forced upon me and it crippled my progress. And so much energy was consumed in pretending I was okay when I wasn't. I had to bury the truth at all costs. It didn't matter h...

I'm forty in three months and very conscious of all the negative self-talk I still do. And I'm worried that if I don't address this habit soon, it will start to define me (if it hasn't already). That may sound melodramatic, but it's meant sincerely. The fug of depression frequently slows me down and affects my sense of self-worth. I work on this with therapy and meditation, but the recent fallout from a difficult familial relationship that I had little control over knocked me sideways while  filling me with enough projected responsibility  to feel like I'm rebuilding from scratch. Add my dad's death to this - along with the financial implications of my mum's unyielding approach - and it's like I'm running on empty.  I can't help but compare what my parents were doing at my age. When I was born, my mum and dad were 35 and 34 respectively and had been married for nearly thirteen years so they had time on their side to have a baby (though they w...

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 f...