webofevil | HBTM (Reply)

This is the first birthday I’ve spent alone. That’s not a whinge, just a fact; if anyone was here they’d spend half their time talking to me through the toilet door, and could even wind up with gastric flu themselves. Nor am I reading anything into this. I don’t believe in omens, which is just as well: on 1 January I opened my front door to greet the new year, and by the bus stop in front of my flat a crow was eating some sick.

I’m now into the Jesus year, which means that if you make it through the age of 33, you have officially beaten Christ. This is only the second birthday I have ever had while permanently employed, and the first in a job I actually wanted. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, and for the first time in my life I can empathise with piss-poor social workers: I would let any number of children go to the wall so long as I could hang on to my livelihood.

So: not doing badly, then, apart from whatever the hell’s going on in my stomach and my consequent avoidance of solid food for, what, three and a half days now.