This is how it was put to me by my friend Miles when we spoke earlier in the month about my 39th Birthday, which was earlier this week. “It’s the last Birthday before you’re 40!” he said gleefully. His Birthday isn’t until August; he’s in the same “academic” year as me but takes great delight in being 7 months my junior. In all honesty, it doesn’t matter much to me; it really is just a number. And, I suppose, an indication that I should know better – all evidence to the contrary. There’s such a stigma in our Western society about ageing that I really don’t find logical – it’s almost seen as a crime. Advertising would have us believe that we should seek to remain in our 20s, that we should all be slim, beautiful, have great skin, our natural hair colour (i.e. not grey) and be fit & agile and, if we’re prepared to shell out loads of our money and time, the products the advertisers are seeking to sell will somehow help us achieve eternal youth. It’s absolute and utter bollocks (this is one of my favourite curses by the way – so versatile and utterly British). Nature herself moves in seasons as does all life on planet Earth; we are born into the Spring, enjoy the Summer, advance to our Autumn and finally bring our lives to a close in the Winter. There’s no fountain of youth and I for one feel that we should embrace ageing – when did experience, knowledge and wisdom start to count for so little?
Needless to say I won’t be dying my hair any time soon but I do need to start improving my overall fitness; after all, even though I’m no spring chicken it’s no excuse for being so overweight and unfit.
I’d taken a couple of days leave from the office to celebrate my Birthday and had planned with Sarah for her to do the same: the plan was to spend this last Saturday in Huddersfield (where Sarah and I met at University) looking around our old stomping grounds and have lunch. We’d then booked a stay at a nearby hotel (Joseph would be staying with my folks for the night again) and planned dinner out at one of Sarah’s favourite restaurants, Aakash in Cleckheaton. These plans went slightly out of the window however when we received word that Sarah’s new car was ready to collect (also from Huddersfield) and although we spent an hour or so there in the town, the day was really spent dealing with collecting the car. We did stay at that same Hotel and did have dinner at Aakash so I suppose “out of the window” is an unfair assessment! We collected Joseph the next day and came home before spending Monday taking the new car out for a run and having lunch out at one of my favourite eateries, Ed’s Easy Diner in York. It’s a typical American diner clone with the usual fare, but I do enjoy their Reese’s Peanut Butter Milkshakes, although they’re not a patch on the shakes available at Denny’s in the US (I miss Orlando and we need to visit again soon!). That evening we had dinner in our local Tex-Mex restaurant, with me ordering my usual, the chicken & beef chimichanga. Sarah also had her usual, steak and chicken with salad & rice.
I’ve always been difficult to buy for, made worse with my now minimalist bent. Birthdays are similar to Christmas in the fact that everyone feels obliged to buy you a gift: often they might spend money on something you really don’t want or need so when asked I usually suggest either a small gift of cash (£5) or a bottle of Coca-Cola Classic, a bar of chocolate and a big bag of crisps (read potato chips my American friends)! When Sarah and I had our New Year stay in Leeds earlier in the month, she bought my Birthday gift under my close supervision (by which I mean I picked and she paid!) and my folks gave me some money in my Birthday card. My Mother always prefers to give me a gift to unwrap, but the difficulty is there’s very little I want or need at this point. Indeed, all of the few items in my Amazon Wish List are books (Sarah has ruined me!) so I may put the funds to buying one of those, although I do still have several books on Kindle to read as I type. I recently bought an Apple Magic Keyboard 2 to use with my iPad for writing blog posts etc. as I find it so much easier to type using a physical keyboard than the virtual one on the iPad or my iPhone, and at £79 on sale (£20 off the usual retail price in the UK) that was far too much for me to expect someone to buy for me as a gift, but was pretty much the only item I was looking to buy. My Mother had offered to buy me a new t-shirt from one of my favourite companies, Last Exit to Nowhere (which makes & sells film related apparel – if you’re a cinephile like me I highly recommend them) but I’ve recently bought one of their designs to replace an old and worn out shirt (again during the January sale with 20% discount) so I’ve no real need. I do also try to keep a fairly minimal wardrobe – it’s by no means capsule but certainly not full of stuff. I have two pairs of jeans, three pairs of chinos which I wear for work, about half a dozen work shirts, two casual short sleeved shirts, one polo shirt and about a dozen t-shirts / sports jerseys. I also have two hoodies (including my Big Red Hiking Hood!) and four coats (winter, summer, a biker jacket (which I’m sure I look ridiculous in but I love it) and a long wool overcoat). I won’t tell you how many pairs of sneakers or backpacks I own – that’s where my minimalist aspirations fall down – but I’m sure Courtney Carver, the creator of clothing challenge “Project 333” wouldn’t hold that against me! If you’ve not heard of Project 333 I highly recommend researching it. I do of course, also wear underwear, but I never see the need to include that as I presume it’s always a given! My Sister did buy me a box of Twinkies and some bath products which are always welcome. I do enjoy gifts which can be consumed!
All in all, I’ve had a pleasant Birthday and enjoyed “the last one before 40”. Also, as it’s taken 7 months for Sarah’s car to be built, I really didn’t mind spending Saturday collecting it and it was quite serendipitous that we’d already planned to be in Huddersfield that day.
Just by way of update on our 5 Year Mission (see earlier blog post on this subject), we have now repaid Sarah’s Student Loan in full. It’s taken quite a chunk of our savings to do so, and we’ll now save for the next few months before assessing the situation in April / May to see if we can pay off my car finance on Mirabeau, which I’m sure we’ll be able to. As we’d see very little take-home cash benefit in paying off my Student Loan earlier (I make only one lump sum payment each January being self-employed), we’ll likely let that be discharged via the usual repayments, by which it should be repaid in full in the next 2 or 3 years (i.e. well before expiry of the 5 Year Mission). The annual interest on my Student Loan is currently 1.5%, which equates to approximately £67.50 annually so not too much. If we repay my car finance, we can expect to see a saving of almost twice that sum each month, which we can then funnel into mortgage repayments, being our only other borrowing.
Big Red Hiking Hood 