On the occasion of my 34th birthday

The night before my twenty-third birthday. Upon waking, soaked through with sweat and whimpering like a lost dog, I stumble into the bathroom and strip off my sodden clothes. The annual anxiety dream.

I was going to be thirty soon. If I hadn't made something of myself by thirty, I was fucked. In the more immediate future, I was going to be twenty three. Christ.

Seven years. I've got seven years and then I'm on borrowed time.

The dream was painfully vivid:

I was old. Old far beyond my twenty-something youthful vigour. Occasionally vaulting steps two at a time and achieving a firm and full erection were things very much of the past. I was probably at least 34, maybe older.

Social services turns up and they're banging on the door and calling out my name, but I'm sitting on the sofa in a puddle of my own piss and shit watching The Price Is Right and I can't get up, and they keep on banging, but I can't generate the necessary momentum to rock forward onto my osteoporotic, arthritic legs, and I'm scared, terrified that if I do succeed, that my legs will give or snap and along with having lost control of my bowels, I will also need pins in my legs. That’s not something I want meals on wheels or the paramedics or whoever to break down the door to find.

Anyway, I’ve convinced myself that a massive jar of olives is £3.99 because I was in a shop once and I’m pretty sure they’re the same ones and the price is right (but it was a long time ago), so I’m screaming “£3.99!” at the television, and the people at the door are screaming my name and trying to look through the letterbox. The live studio audience woops in excitement.

When I arrive to the floor, I don’t know if I’ve broken anything but I heard a crack. I’m at eye level with several hundred layers of belly button lint that have formed a symbiotic relationship with the rotting underlay.

Why hadn’t I done anything with my life? The knocking has stopped and I can hear the presenter tell me that the olives are in fact £6.98, proceeded by groans and cries of “No!” from the audience.

I roll my head up to face my interlocuter. “I remember when they were £3.99,” I grumble, but he’s already asking me how much for a box of artisanal muesli and I’m trying to think if I have a price for that somewhere in the corridors of the past, when I was wandering around supermarkets late at night, something that will make me a winner while I lie here.

After several hours, I’m still there and it’s dark and the heating has gone off. Is this the worst dream I’ve ever had? I mean, it’s not so bad. I haven’t gotten up which might mean I’m content just to stay here for the rest of time. But why haven’t I woken up? Amanda Lamb is showing a couple from Doncaster around a holiday home in Alicante. Is this better than being awake? I guess it must be.

Finally of course, I’m in the bathroom and I’m 22 again, damn near 23, and I’m toweling off the sweat, relieved that Jim and Jill had the temerity to put in an offer on their dream villa before I woke up.

Arriving to work this morning presented something of an “Inception-like” crisis. Am I still dreaming? This is exactly the kind of dream I’d have. You know, it goes on forever and I’m sitting at a desk and I’m angry a lot and I whinge about the weather and other stuff that makes me look like a miserable old fart, and then I probably have the other dream every now and again with the olives and spiralling decrepitude to spice things up.

Anyway, never mind any of that. I am 23 years young today (for the 11th year running), which means time is still on my side. To celebrate and honour the day, I've concocted a playlist, the theme of which is the fleeting nature of time. I will sit alone and listen. It's vaguely designed to nudge me gently out onto a precipice above the abyss of unending night (but in a fun way, yeah?)

For those interested, I've included the playlist below, maybe you can listen along and we can remember all of those very good times we've had. There is at least one isn't there? Say that there is.

Rolling Stones - Time is on my side
Cyndi Lauper - Time after time
Glen Campbell - By the time I get to Phoenix.
The Kinks - This time tomorrow
Crosby, Stills and Nash - Long Time Gone
The Clash - One more time
PInk Floyd - Time
Muse - Time is running out