Forty one

I've never liked my own birthday - or Christmas for that matter, perhaps I am just a miserable old fart - but turning 41 has to be the most dull of them all. A slight trough from the peak of being forty. All that self-centred searching due to becoming a decade older, the realisation of your own mortality, the panic that  sets in because there's not much time left, the lists of ways you plan to use the next forty years and the promise to yourself of not wasting a moment. Everyone has a crisis at forty but it kind of fades by the time you reach 41, it's just another year.

So I am going to do some of my favourite things:

1. Have coffee in bed
2. Ride my favourite horse of all time and feed him carrots
3. Go to the beach rain or shine and marvel at the sea
4. Drink champagne, a really good one
5. Eat prawns, you know those huge ones which are almost sweet and so good with garlic mayonnaise
6. Be with friends and loved ones

I think that's a pretty special birthday after all.