Unfortunately the earth has spun the requisite number of times around the sun for me to be 32, worse luck! I apologise now, but this mighty be a bit mushy in places, and result in serious gagging!

When you are a child, you don’t think of yourself as a 32 year old man, mainly because that would be so weird.

Mum: Anand, you have turned 10 today, and we have got you a NES

Anand: Yeah, thanks, but the problem I have with the Unions and striking is that it doesn’t really achieve anything, does it?

Mum: A NES Anand!

You think of yourself in epochs, child, teenager, young adult, adult, parent, grand parent, dead. Being an adult is so far away that when you reach it, it kind of happens in a surprise. You go from young adult to adult in a snap. At first you don’t even notice it. The creep begins when you start thinking about your journey home from a night out before the party has ended. That turns into leaving early to catch the last train rather than getting the night bus. Before you know it, you are leaving parties before you are even drunk or partied out because ‘you just don’t feel like it’. When you are 20, all you can think about is the next time you are going to be out . When might you get an opportunity to flirt with the opposite sex. When will you get so drunk that some hysterical story will tumble out of. When you are 30, all you can think about is the one time in the year you get to properly let your hair down. The rest of the time is filled with bills, and mortgage rates and the value of good insurance.

I am not griping, I am happy to have gotten this far in my life. Lots of people don’t, so I guess that is a pretty good achievement. I am utterly privileged and proud of my friends and family. People say they love these kinds of people all the time, and it sounds easy to say, but I cannot stress enough that I wouldn’t be half the person I am with out them. Which is a worrying thought ! But I really don’t even demarcate that much between my family and my friends, they are one and the same. They are the people I rely on, they are the people I would do anything for.

I find it important that I have these relationships, more important than anything else, because they are my scaffold for when I am wobbly, and my diving board when I am not. As the quote that makes up this blogs title attests, no man is an island.

GAG WARNING ALERT : The following could be see as twee and nauseating, so please don’t read on. But I had a think about my birthday wish, and I came up with the following.

A friend of mine is going through an absolute horror of a time. They are having to deal with something so nasty that it is one of those things you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. I can see them visibly changing from the person they were, a brilliant, funny, loving person, into someone who the world is trying to wash away. It is throwing one curve ball after another, and they are taking each knock. They are tired, physically and emotionally, and they are suffering to a certain extent, on their own. If not truly on their own, I expect they feel that way often. If I could have one birthday wish, it would be for them to have all the happiness that is due me go to them. I want them to wake and just have a day of uninterrupted happiness.

That isn’t too much to ask on your birthday is it?

Thank you to everyone who has wished me a happy birthday also, it truly has made my day! 

-         Anand