My birthday, if you have been following the story to date, is now only hours away. When I was young I would try to stay awake till midnight, watching the clock by my bed tick the minutes away till the new day had begun and I could wish myself many happy returns. Now that I am older, and tend to go to bed later, waiting up till midnight is not such a significant event, and if anything I usually have to make an effort to put my book away and switch off the light before the hour arrives, knowing I will struggle to get up in time for work the next morning. To avoid this last problem, I have had the foresight to take tomorrow as holiday, so that at least I can have a more leisurely start to the day, lingering over breakfast, browsing through the newspaper, rather than rushing about trying to make the sandwiches while feeding the cat. No wonder my sandwiches sometimes taste a little odd.
Birthdays come around so quickly nowadays; the years keep piling up, in a relentless sort of a way. It would be nice to have a break now and again from time's wingèd chariot: perhaps to stay put at a particularly interesting age for a few years, and then maybe skip through some of the less attractive ones a little more quickly. Tomorrow I will be – well, whatever: not a very enthralling age, though at least a prime number, which doesn't happen all that often. But then they don't seem to sell greeting cards saying Happy Prime Number Birthday when they sell so many other obscurely personalised cards. A gap in the market if ever there was one.
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