Seventy not out.

That’s age I hasten to add and not IQ.

If it were measuring IQ, it would be more like point-seven. The ‘not out’ is optional…

I was thinking to use “What a difference a day makes” but it appears I’ve already beaten myself to that one.

I’m not sure what it is about the ‘zeros’ birthdays but they always seem to come as a bit of a shock to the system (me anyway).

And frankly what difference does one day make? BUT, when you get up in the morning and feel yourself thinking, “Well I’m never going to see my sixties again,” it makes you wonder.

Seventy not out.

I am extremely lucky that I have always looked young for my age.

I had immense trouble in my youth getting served in pubs. Well I say immense trouble. But in all honesty the underage drinking thing was nowhere near as much of a concern then as it is now.

It’s sufficient to say that my original recollections of drinking in pubs were in the back bar of a pub after the weekly youth club meeting at our local Methodist church.

The pub itself was later flattened in a redevelopment and became part of the local Sainsbury’s.

Watney’s Starlight at the amazing price of one shilling and eleven pence ha’penny a pint…

That was the time of rampant inflation and there were people there who remembered to pint first broaching one shilling.

God it was foul but that was industrial beer for you in the 1970s.

Or maybe even at the end of the 60s because my recollection is I started drinking in pubs when I was thirteen.

Fifty-seven years ago.

Seventy not out.

Actually I’m lying. In those days I looked older than my age. However, there is no sense in getting in the way of a good story.

The more I think about it, the more that I looked somewhere between 18 and 20 from the time I was 13 until I was in my late 20s.

It’s since then that I’ve looked to be a decade younger than I am.

Which has both its upsides and its downsides.

One of the downsides being a credibility issue when somebody thinks it’s a forty-year-old that was telling them things that they needed to do rather than somebody of fifty and above.

Especially if they were of a rather older nature…

What was I going to talk about next?

I’ve probably said it before but I will say it again. Inside every 70-year-old there is a 35-year-old wondering what the hell happened.

It’s just my continuing aches and pains that remind me that 35 was a long long time ago.

I don’t often mention social media but I have to say that the one that begins with face and ends with book hit a blinder when it showed up a photo of me from ten years ago this week.

Anomaly signed by Richard Moore. You know I’m going to leave what is just written there because it looks like nothing like what I said, which was alongside the Berlin Wall.

That intellectually feels about right because that would have been when Die Tochter was on her gap year and living in Berlin.

I have to remember that anything less than six years ago will have happened while I’ve been in Spain so ten years doesn’t seem unrealistic …

Seventy not out.

My birthday lunch. Compare and contrast with L’s. Tbh circumstances make a difference. Photo by author

I’m not sure I can remember much of what happened at my 60th birthday, let alone the 50th, 40th, and ones before.

Actually yes I do remember what happened at my fortieth birthday because one of my fellow partners at work hired a girl to come into a meeting at the office and take half her clothes off.

Ah yes – strippagram. Do you still have them nowadays?

Good grief, that’s probably the last time that particular person did something nice for me.

Soon after, the country went into a recession and he spent the rest of our combined business career trying to destroy me and make me look small. He tried to make me appear incompetent while he would steal my ideas and so on and so on.

Oh what a fun life we lead.

I cannot imagine anything like that happening over here.

I would not profess to understand it but people here actually seem to like me and want to help me succeed.

Maybe it’s a Spanish thing and I’ve left something back in the UK.

Yesterday was a case in point. Our Spanish teacher had asked Lorraine where we were going to have our evening drink.

She asked me. I gave her a likely suggestion and thought nothing more of it. Well we got there in the evening. Had our drink as anticipated. Then one of the waiters appeared carrying several glasses of cava. Lorraine had mentioned to him earlier that it was my birthday and it appears that it is his birthday next week.

After a nice glass of bubbles we went to pay for the (main) drinks to be told there was nothing to pay. It transpires that our Spanish teacher had popped in earlier and asked our waiter if we did come in, she would pay for what we had. Isn’t that nice? I think we’ll eat these spring rolls. Oh boy I said I was completely speechless.

And then when we came back from lunch today, our cleaner Isabel proceeded to unveil a cake for the both of us.