Many Returns.

It’s my birthday in a few hours, I’ll be a hundred and seventy-five.

Something like that.

I can still walk, which is a blessing, and I can still juggle – not something people my age are known for.

I don’t fancy getting up on the unicycle much though, even if I have three of them in the cellar.

Anyone want one?

Age is a series of letting go and not doing things you once did.

I don’t eat raw Brazil nuts anymore.

Teeth.

And I don’t run like I used to.

Knees.

I bumped into Dennis a couple of days ago and it turned out we share a birthday.

“How long did it take you to find out?” My daughter asked him.

“A hundred and seventy-four years,” he replied. 
I’m a year older.

He doesn’t smoke anymore – I never have.

He doesn’t drink – I had just had a glass of red wine.

Or two.

We were sitting in the bar when he told me this and we spoke at length.

Which we hadn’t before.

The previous time we had the conversation went-

“My daughter told me you weren’t selling pizzas anymore.”

“She’s wrong.”

“I see.”

“Do you want one?”

“No.”

I stopped pizza years ago.

This time the conversation was different.

“I have a theory.”

“Oh yeah?”

“A lot of your life you think, I’m alive and living. But maybe one day you just know you’re not. That in fact you’re dying. I haven’t got there yet.”

“Yes, I used to think I was immortal and when I stopped thinking that, I thought I was auto-repairable. Now I know I’m not.”

Dennis has part of one finger missing.

Me, a toe.

Because he makes and sells pizzas all the kids said he had cut it making the pizzas and the bits were in the dough.

In fact, he lost in to a slammed car-door.

I lost mine to a lawnmower.

When I went to the hospital the doctor welcomed me with a – ‘Ah, first of the season.’

It was early Spring.

Today, it’s late winter.

It’s my birthday in a few hours.

I’ll be a hundred and seventy-five.

And celebrating.