40 years young

Today I am 40. I remember when my dad turned 40. Forty is my dad's age, not mine!

I've been preparing myself for a while: when I was 38 and people asked me my age I would reply by saying I'd be 40 next year. Was I wishing my life away, or was I simply accepting that middle-age was soon to be upon me?

Now that I am 40, I am inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer (don't I always?) who observed that, "the first forty years of life give us the text: the next thirty supply the commentary." I just hope it's not provided by John Motson.

[Thanks to Byron for the pic.]

Surprise!

You got me good and proper! Those furtive text messages, the turning of the laptop screen away from my eyes and the obsession with the weather. All is now clear. In some ways I feel a bit stupid to have not sussed, but in fact I am pleased to have got the full benefit of the surprise. It's the aspect of a surprise party that makes it, well, a surprise party!

Those of you who have been paying close attention over the last few years of this blog will know that I turn 40 this year. As will those of you who actually know me. My birthday is actually later this month, so I was not expecting to arrive back at the house (after a very enjoyable afternoon shooting clay-pigeons for the first time) to find a whole load of cars parked outside!

"What are all these cars doing here?" I asked Dave who was in the car with me. "I dunno..." Dave said back, unconvincingly, "Perhaps the neighbours have got friends round..." he suggested. A good attempt, Dave, but it doesn't explain why I recognised Rachel's parents' cars and my mum and dad's car! There was nobody around, so Dave led the way round to the garden at the back, and...

Surprise! A garden full of folks! Family and friends raising a glass to... well, to me! It appears that my better (oh, so better) half, Rachel, had spent the last couple of months planning a surprise party for my 40th! It was the start of the best party ever... live music, Chinese lanterns, a wonderful cake (that's me in the picture at my computer, complete with Rubik's Cube!), and a magician. Yes, a magician! In fact, the whole night was quite magical.

Thank you to everyone who came, and to everyone who clearly helped Rachel with the organising and the secret-keeping (shame on you). And thank you for cards and presents. I've not opened any as yet... will save for my actual birthday later this month. A few more days of my 30's left, which I shall hang on to as long as I can!

But thank you most of all to Rachel. So much thought and effort paid off. Thank you baby... I love you very much x

Happy Birthday to me!

I seem to be a little fixated with the fact that I’m going to be 40 next year. As I turn 39, today is the first day of my 40th year on this planet. Even while I was still 38 I was saying I’ll be 40 next year if people asked me how old I was.

Rachel cooked me a full English (or should that be Italian) breakfast: Sausage, pancetta, eggs and mushrooms. Then I opened my card from Rachel (a birthday moo) and my remaining presents as I’d opened some before we came away. Two CDs (Flight of the Conchords and Eels), Seven Pounds DVD, and a complicated looking game called Ingenious! It was also really nice to get text messages from my parents, my sister Sally, and Emma a friend from my PhD days. My best present though was waking up in an Umbrian farmhouse with Rachie next to me and glorious blue skies out the window.

Another morning sunbathing, but this time we had decided we’d head out around lunchtime to drive over to Montepulciano, where our favourite red wine comes from. Turns out we’d timed it well as a little cloud came over making it just a little cooler. Conchords and Eels made it a short drive over into Tuscany, though the road over to Cortona is torturous. Another half hour drive past Cortona brought to the hillside town of Montepulciano.

As with Cortona, the roads are steep to walk up but the town is not big so it’s not too taxing. Even better that is cooler due to the cloud. We buy some nice red wine for Sandra and Keith to say thank you for looking after Freya for the week (although from the texts we’ve been receiving it sounds like they’ve all been having a great time). We also buy ourselves a cheaper bottle along with some sundried tomato, pecorino and salami sauce which is almost the same price. But we’d tasted it on the Italian bread at the front of the shop and agree we should buy some before we know how much it costs. It does taste good though. We also buy a little wooden toy as a present for Freya.

We hadn’t really had any lunch and decide we’d like to have dinner in Montepulciano but it is now 5pm and Italian restaurants tend not to open till around 7. We walk back up the hill to Café Polliziano (probably spelt wrong) as we’d walked past earlier and it looked nice and had views out across the Tuscan countryside. We kind of hoped it would be open and serving food. It was open but the only food it was serving was cake. So we have a coffee and share a piece of lemon meringue pie Italian style. Delicious.

We then decide to drive back over towards Lake Trasimeno to Castigliano Del Lago, another small town overlooking the lake. By now the cloud has drifted away and it’s another beautiful evening. A quick look round the few shops there, and a present for Lauren, before settling on the nicest looking restaurant in town which has a terrace under some trees and a view towards the lake. Another fantastic meal (well, it is my birthday). The meatballs were the best I’ve ever tasted!

If the remaining 364 days of my 40th year are as good as this one then I’ll be a happy boy.

Happy Birthday!

My son, Ross, turned 4 today... Happy Birthday Ross!

Ross is a particularly amazing little boy. He was born 11 weeks prematurely and has had plenty of medical issues to deal with in his short life so far. He spent the first 5 months of his life in hospital, and is still on oxygen now. Ross is also autistic (or at least he "scores on the autistic spectrum") which effectively means he doesn't seem to understand language. He is blind in one eye and is very short sighted in the other. Oh, and he hardly eats.

The most amazing thing about Ross? He seems to be one of the happiest little boys I know. He's often laughing to himself (about what I have no idea!) and jumps up and down or does a little dance when watching a favourite DVD or listening to music he likes. He's in his own little world, but he seems to like it there.

I don't know if he'll understand it's his birthday today. And I don't know if he'll ever be able to read this, but happy birthday Ross! We love you to bits.

Happy Birthday!

A year ago today Freya (a.k.a. Fritz, Bella Boo, Baby Jesus, Bum Lord...) was born. Happy 1st Birthday Freya!! We love you to bits!

We had a little party to celebrate. Thanks to everyone who came. Special thanks to Birgit and Dave for the help, Sandra for the cake and Keith for the other food. Oh and Billy... sorry about the balloons.

The Butterfly of Freedom

If life begins at 40, I turned -3 last Sunday (happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me...). Had a lovely weekend away. Really, really good... Anyway, I thought I would share with my friends (that's you) the card that I got from my parents.

It's called The Butterfly of Freedom, and it's a one of Edward Monkton's "interesting thoughts". In case the image doesn't load correctly, I'll explain the scene. Twelve simply drawn butterflies are depicted, of which 11 are within a drawn box. Our hero is the 12th butterfly who has broken free from the constraints the box and is flying away. The butterflies ask, "Why do you fly outside the box?" "I fly outside the box because I can." replies our hero. "But we KNOW the box. We are SAFE inside the box." "That, my friend, is why I leave it. For you may be SAFE... but I AM FREE!"

Now without wanting to get too serious (cue serious point), the question you have to ask yourself is... would you rather be safe or free? It seems to me that we often opt for security and in the process we give up our freedom. At least that's what it feels like.

I guess what I'm saying is: Fly outside the box... at least once in a while.

Turning 30!

by Rachel

In just under two months I am going to turn the big 3, 0, and up until a few weeks ago it hadn’t bothered me in the slightest. In fact I was one of those people who would insist, ‘I am not worried about turning 30, why would I be’. I was more worried about avoiding celebrating my thirtieth because of my pathological hate for birthdays, rather than the actual fact that I was going to be 30.

And then it happened. I started to panic.

Over the last few weeks I have been delving more into this ‘Turning 30’ lark. Though all I seem to keep getting told by websites and articles is that I should have done a parachute jump, travelled the world, lived in a different country, had a threesome, been involved in some form of kinky sex, paid off my credit cards, own my own house, own a sports car etc. etc.. Surely there are deeper concerns than these?

I am going to be 30, and I feel as if I haven’t achieved anything I wanted to achieve. I’m not married, in fact, I am not even engaged. I guess you could say I am in a ‘stable’ relationship, as yes we are living together, but marriage is a long way off. That started more panic, ‘Oh God, I am going to be an old bride, if in fact I ever get to be a bride’. Then I worry more about the fact that I am one of the few women that I know who is going to turn 30 and that no one has proposed to, am I really that poor a catch?

Then the panic about having children sets in. I don’t actually like children, but hey I would like the option to have them, but surely my biological clock is already ticking, it’s almost as if I can already hear it. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Perhaps I would like to have children, there was a time in my life when I wanted two, in fact I remember it precisely, I wanted a boy first and then a girl and would have been sorely disappointed if it had not worked out that way. Now I would just like the option to have a child, to actually find a mate who would like to have a child with me and before it is too late. There is goes again, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Don’t even get me started on my career, as far back as I can remember I have always wanted to be an actress. For years I dreamt of being ‘found’, I lived the deluded dream that one day a Television or Film director would just come across me at Gerrards Cross train station whilst on my way home from school. It’s not like I actually attempted to ‘be’ an actress, I didn’t go to Drama School, or studying acting at college or University, I just thought that I was destined to be found. By the time I was 18 and hadn’t yet been ‘found’ I went to University to study Media in the hope that if I got a job in Television I would be ‘found’ behind the scenes, in the same way that Caroline Aherne was.

The biggest blow to my acting career came when the actor John Thaw, famous for playing Inspector Morse, died in 2002. I had spent since 1988 fantasising that my first acting role would be playing alongside John Thaw, I even came up with the idea that unknown to Inspector Morse he had actually fathered a child, and I would be the person cast to play that role of his daughter. The day John Thaw died marked the end of my ‘dream’. Since then I have just resigned myself to the fact that I was actually destined to be behind the camera and not in front of it.

I started work in television nearly nine years ago, and the nearest to being an actress was when I worked as a Script Supervisor on ‘Most Haunted’ for Living TV where I spent hours in the middle of night looking for ghosts with a DV Camera in hand. I finally have to face that career wise I will turn thirty never having accepted the BAFTA and Oscar that I had dreamt of .

Sheila Pansal and Ellen Jackson writers of the book ‘Turning 30’ say: “Remember when you were 20, when you danced till dawn, dated people you knew you shouldn’t, worked hard, played hard, spent money on stuff you didn’t need…..”

Well what’s really changed? OK, I don’t dance until dawn as much as I did when I was 20, but it’s only because most of my mates are married or settled down. As for dating men that I shouldn’t, I am living with a married man. I don’t think I could have ended up dating anyone less ‘suitable’, and I certainly wouldn’t have dated a married man when I was 20!

Working hard, well when I am working, yes I do work hard, bloody hard in fact, far harder than I would have done when I was in my early twenties. Back then I didn’t actually care so much for the job as I did for the pay packet.

And what about the spending money on things I shouldn’t, at 20 I was spending £25 on a top for a night out with the girls, at 29 and 10 months I have far more expensive taste and at certain times during my late twenties have been known to spend near on £1,000 on three items of clothing, hardly something I think that my bank manager would approve of.

The truth is that when you hit thirty you start to wonder what you want to do with your life, will you ever be happy, fulfilled or successful. I think that reality finally slaps you in the face and you realise that you have to stop fantasising about your future. There isn’t going to be a dream man with no baggage, who will whisk you off your feet and take you away to Paris for a candlelit meal for no other reason than that he loves you. That children don’t always come when you want them, and if you are lucky enough to have one, then the best time to have them is when they can be made is out of love and not just because one or other partner wants one. And that perhaps it was time to get focused on what you really wanted to do with your career, rather than haphazardly moving from job to job in the hope that one day you will actually be in a career that you enjoy, rather than working for money.

I was rather intrigued to find out that in Astrology there is a period between 28 and 30 called Saturn’s Return. According to astrologers it is the first time that Saturn completes a cycle through your birth chart and is in the same place that it was at the time of your birth. Astrologers believe this to be one of the most important times in your life, a time of endings and beginnings.

As with any new phase in life, embarking on something ‘new’ can feel unsettling and even unpleasant as we are taken out of the comfort zone of what we know. Saturn’s Return is about examining what you truly want or desire, and although it is a very trying time, remember that anyone else who has turned 30, no matter what position they were in has probably felt the same frustration, loneliness and alienation. You need to realise that you do have friends out there who are probably going or have gone through the same set of emotions and that it is not always good to shut people out. By talking to other people about how you feel you can hopefully come to some understanding of what you want from life.

At the end of the day whether it is Saturn’s Return or just a Quarter life crisis, what turning 30 symbolises is the fact that you are now embarking on adulthood. You are now a fully fledged adult, and with that comes the feeling of responsibility, a sense that you need to be accomplishing things.

So next time you panic that you’re not getting married, or having babies, or in the right job or relationship, just remember that it is a natural progression, it’s written in the stars. As soon as you’re past that actual birthday hopefully you can just get on and start enjoying finally being a grown up.