Fantastic Day

I woke up fairly naturally this morning, having had an entirely non-Freudian, easily interprable dream. The Alps had been turned into restaurants, with diners eating at a big long table that extended the whole way up the mountains. BUT - and this was the cool thing - for a fee, you could turn your own specific gravity off, and 'swim' - or fly, clearly, direction being what it is - up the length of the table to the top of the mountain. I swam the height of an Alp, and only got one complaint when I accidentally stuck my palm in someone's ketchup to steady myself and stop myself from accidentally kicking him in the face.
You can't please some people.
I reached the top, my arms and legs aching with that satisfying pain of long exertion. d was already there, and said she wanted to walk up and down stairs for about an hour and a half. I decided to 'swim' home instead - at which point, for no terribly identifiable reason I can see (answers on an e-postcard please!), the setting changed, and I was in the sports block of my old high school - and "home" was a first floor classroom right at the other side of the building. So I swam-flew down the crowded corridors of my old school...
And woke up 40.

To be fair, I'd already woken up 40 a couple of times, when, bless her heart, d had rolled over, realised she was awake, and sung happy birthday to me. It was cute at 2...something-or-other. At 5-something-or-other I have a feeling I just rolled over and ignored her.

But I have to tell you, swim-flying up an Alp is a great way to wake up 40. Gives you a sense of enormous wellbeing, and a feeling of having finally arrived in the right body.

I opened cards in bed, and my suspicions of yesterday proved correct - normally, d and I take each other for dinner and a show for our respective birthdays, but a) the economy being what it is, and b) there not being a show I'd tear my eyes out to see until November (The Lion In Winter, since you didn't ask), we'd sort of semi-agreed that we'd go ans see something I would tear my eyes out to see - The Doctor Who Experience in Earl's Court. And so we did.

Our local breakfast cafe was unexpectedly closed this morning, so we schlepped to Earl's Court, and ate breakfast at a Gregg's Cafe there. Word to the wise - if you're diabetic, avoid their so-called "plain" porridge like the plain - not only is sugar its second ingredient, it's also laced with dried sucrose powder - it's about as plain as a chocolate eclair, frankly. When the bill arrived, d showed it to me, chuckling. You remember the world was supposed to end yesterday? (How are we all by the way? Still here?). Well, maybe it was just a day or so late, because the price of my birthday breakfast turned out to be £6.66. Yep - I had the Breakfast of the Beast. Given the palaver some believers in all this stuff make about bar-codes being The Mark, I think that's enough evidence of my diabolic nature, and am going to demand people start calling me Damien from now on...

Having finished breakfast, we got to Earl's Court, and I unpeeled a metaphor - it being October, and the weather having remembered it was October after an unseasonally warm beginning to the month, I was covered in a grey fleece and gloves, as befits a serious-minded 40-year-old journalist. Underneath though, I was wearing a T-shirt of the costume worn by the Sixth Doctor - an unremittingly ghastly car-accident of colours and patterns, which everybody in the world appears to hate - including the actor who originally had to wear it, Colin Baker. Everybody in the world, that is, except me. I think it's brilliant, and I'm quite happy with the fact that I'm in a minority of one on this. So I unzipped my grey, serious 40-year-old self, and let my inner 8-year-old free for a couple of hours. If you're looking for a review of the Experience, you'll have to wait, and you'll have to go somewhere else - I'll post a link in a couple of days, probably. If you're a fan of the show, you won't need me to tell you to go. If you're not a fan of the show or an 8-year-old, you probably don't need to go anyway. Me, I loved it. I flew the Tardis, got shot by a Cyberman, flinched as d was nearly touched by a 3D Weeping Angel, walked through a crack in space-time, waxed appallingly lyrical about cyber-heads from days gone by, waggled a Dalek's plunger (oo-er, missus!) and generally had the most fun of 2011.

Oh, I should say at this point - I did promise a birthday weigh-in, and indeed I did one. Now the dream of reaching my four-stone barrier at 16 stone 7.5 had of course long gone the way of the Dodo, but after the sort of week I've had, I actually expected to have put on significant numbers of pounds. But no - entirely static at 16 stone 11. Not the week's official weigh-in though - that still happens Tuesday - so check back with me then and we'll see if there's any movement whatsoever, or whether this has been a limbo week.

Anyhow, after spending a few hours with the Doctors, we headed for Paddington, and Wales. This is a weird admission, and not exactly apropos, but I've never regarded Wales as "Home". I mean, it's where I was born and raised, where my folks still live, and where at least a handful of my friends still live too - friends of course being the people I've accumulated along the path of the last forty years who have proved themselves to have qualities I admire, respect, occasionally out-and-out envy or love. But I've never thought of Wales - of Merthyr - as "Home". As a kid, I always thought of some nameless, probably English place as Home, because frankly, the kids I grew up with were pretty bloody horrible most of the time. As a teenager that changed, and I started building friendships that endure to this day, but still, the place didn't feel like "Home" - mainly because I'd been to visit London by then, and fallen head over heels in love with it. From that moment on, I was always a Londoner, however much I described myself - and I did, and still do - as a Welshman.

Recently though, there's been a sea-change. I'm finding that I still really love the idea of London, but that the actual, everyday, day-to-day slogging reality of it has become pretty freakin' miserable...and that the kids who were pretty bloody horrible to me in Wales when I was a child are still horrible today, only they didn't just come from Merthyr - they came from everywhere, including London. And that today's kids are notsomuch pretty bloody horrible as positively psychotic on occasion. I want out.

And coming to Wales today - which until last week, I absolutely, positively, definitely didn't want to do - I don't know what else to tell you, but something clicked. Something went Rubik, and made sense, and Merthyr felt like coming Home, for pretty much the first time.

Like I say, this is not in any way to imply I never liked it here - I love my folks, and I love my friends, and there are bits of Merthyr that were always really good to me. I just never belonged here.
Till today.

I turned 40 today, but in a very weird, what-the-Hell kind of way, I also, I think, turned Welsh for pretty much the first time. Buggered if I know what that's about, and buggered if I know if it'll last, but there ya go. I can only report the truth to you, and see what the Hell we all make of it.

Two other notes before I finish. There'll be people out there who think I spent my 40th birthday in a stupid childish way. Absolutely, and I had a fantastic time, thanks. But I didn't do the Who thing just for me. Matter of fact, I never do any Who thing just for me.

Of the handful of Best Gifts Merthyr ever gave me was a friend called Jon.He was sweet and vaguely clueless and highly intelligent and more than a little perverse and more than anything else, he was very good company.

I only got to meet him because he was a Who fan, and so was I.
In fact, oddly enough, I was introduced to him by a classmate of mine who would go on to burgle my house. And, weirdly, to steal, separately, from my biological dad. To be honest, I think he was bored to tears with all my Who-talk and thought if I had another Whovian to pester about it all, he wouldn't have to listen. He was right. Jon was the closest a developing atheist ever gets to a godsend - someone thrust into their life who makes everything he touches better. Oddly enough...well, oddly enough unless you knew him...he went on to be a doctor himself, and he was good at it.
We always kept in touch, though not with the regularity that we should have. I never seem to keep in touch with any of the people I really care about with the regularity I should, I'm basically crap. When the 8th Doctor had his one TV outing, Jon and I talked for about twice as long as the feature-length episode immediately after it ended, dissecting the thing in minute detail. We went to a couple of conventions together, and shared all sorts of other things.

But Jon never got to see the renaissance of Who, because, in a stunningly medical exercise, he killed himself with insulin about a decade ago. Every time I watch the show now, I think of him. I want to ask him what he thought of it, and where he thinks the arc is going, and to still dissect every last second of it with him. So today was partly for Jon...because I made it to 40, and didn't get to miss the storming return of our favourite show. And because he didn't, and did.

And, on a brighter side, tomorrow, I'm meeting one of my Karens for coffee. Longer-term readers will know I live in a world of Karens - a bizarre irony, since I haven't actually seen any of my Karens for a good long while. So it will be great to catch up with this Karen (the one I still, probably irritatingly, to this day think of as 'Pulley') over a coffee...oh and shorter term readers will understand when I say that tomorrow dammit, I'm fulfilling another ambition - tomorrow, in what I now actually feel is my Home Town, I'm gonna get the balls to ask for a decaff skinny latte, so nehh!

Forty feels right. I don't know how to explain it to you any better than d did to me, out of the blue, at Paddington today.
"It's like you've been waiting for this," she said. "You look so comfortable in your own skin suddenly, it's just...amazing."
She's right. I feel more like 'me' than I have done for about fifteen years.

No idea why that should be.

Just do.