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So there it is anyway, your Thirtieth birthday.
It's coming up fast and there's no way round it, that red-ringed sign on the highway of life, as you slow down, brake and then enter your suburbs, past the church gates, the schoolyard, the closed-circuit cameras, past the speed ramps, the spotlights... well you get the idea.
So I suppose it depends what you've really been doing, all this time, but if you haven't in fact ever done all that much, except get yourself up and off to work in the morning, and from there to a bar when you've just about had it, while wishing most days they'd just give you the money, and most of your friends are exactly the same, then it's probably time for a couple of changes. Time to slow down at parties, and speed up at work. Time to think about marriage, your health and your future, time to start wondering why you're not all that rich yet. Time to develop a couple of interests, golf, DIY or an exercise schedule, jogging, the markets, an investment portfolio, time to think about children, and seeing more of your family, time to stop smoking, especially dope. Time to stop thinking about quitting your job with a grand final gesture, one after all you'll never get round to making, say informing head office that you're off to keep pigs, and start trying to think how you're going to make partner. Time, in other words, to try and get with the programme.
Still, what can I say ? There's no way, really, it's going to happen like that.
Whatever else happens it's just going to be... different, let's put it that way, when it finally comes, and as for the reasons, such as they are, well you could say it all started with the wedding in Germany, a few days before Christmas, almost exactly seven years earlier.
So it's an old story this, and a lot of it's hazy, I suppose the day of the wedding, at least before the reception, the dinner, the speeches, the band up on stage, is a blur, pretty much. Still, that's hardly surprising - I'd been out there all evening the evening before, with the uncles, the brothers, around half the bride's family, in three or four beer halls with long trellis tables and open grate fires, with live entertainment, drifts of snow by the doorway, and more often than not something's head on the wall, drinking steiner, after steiner, after steiner of pils, and then after that schapps in the guesthouse bar. So it's no excuse really, you know, it's honestly not, but it wasn't that late when the buffet wound down, the dinner laid on for the overnight guests, which most people left at around about Ten, going off to bed to rest up from the journey, to sleep off the flight or unpack for the morning, or just reflect and prepare for the service next day. Instead, let's face it, of rolling off out down the hill to the village, doing their bit you could say to try and bond with the in-laws, losing track of the time to the strains of the folk band, to the tuba, the cymbals, the cheers of the crowd, before veering upstairs around five hours later, and passing out, finally, with the clock pushing Three.
So on the day of the wedding... there were one or two problems, let's put it that way, smoke in the room and a rush in the morning, the sun streaming in through the gap in the shutters, the shirt, tie and waistcoat, the stumble downstairs... |
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