50

Numbers, numbers. They float into our lives and dangle there, as if they might actually mean something. The morning before I turned forty I opened the front door and caught my first glimpse of the Hale-Blipp comet, a little fuse-light dissolving in the brightening blue. I took it as a candle, a gift, a personal harbinger (though of what I couldn't say).

Ten years later the signs are lesss rueful. I am married to a wonderful woman and we have a beautiful little boy. Though we woke up Monday morning feeling crap (a stomach bug), we recovered somewhat by late afternoon. My wife Sam brought me a little chocolate birthday cake with one candle and a balloon blazoned with the number in question. Our appetites hadn't recovered yet, but our son had fun blowing out the candle and playing with the balloon (and eating plenty of cake).

That evening we celebrated my birthday in style, with cousins and friends, in Layla, a lovely Turkish restaurant on Pembroke Street. Most of the gifts were books (naturally), including a fabulous collection of photographs by one of my all-time favourites: Josef Koudelka.Someone called for a speech, so I made one (about 10 words, amounting to "thanks everyone"). When they asked for a poem the only vaguely appropriate one I could think of was James Fenton's blackly funny 'God, A Poem', which I know by heart:

"Oh he said: 'If you lay off the crumpet
I'll see you alright in the end.
Just hang on until the last trumpet.
Have faith in me, chum ? I'm your friend.'

But if you remind him, he'll tell you:
'I'm sorry, I must have been pissed ?
Though your name rings a sort of a bell. You
Should have guessed that I do not exist."

And so on. It got some laughs anyway. If I'd thought of it I'd have brought Kingsley Amis's poem about turning fifty, biting and bitter, but also blackly funny.

I was going to use one of the shots of our son playing with the balloon (my birthday, his balloon), but I think the best photo I got is the one above; the light is just right, it being the late afternoon or early evening of my life, depending on how one looks at it.