30 times round the sun

But more importantly, welcome to the world John! Hope Pam and Paul manage some sleep at some point during the rest of this year!

So I woke up this morning (da da da da dum in a blues style...) and thought "oh crap I'm not a 20 something any more!" A few of times actually.
The last few birthdays have been basically just another day but today felt a bit different, and it's hard to say why. I can't really say that I felt more mature, more refined or less likely to streak across the beach at midnight, but I did, do, feel like some kind of milestone has been passed.
If anything I'd say I feel a bit more confident. And it seems a bit brash to say that is just because I've got time served; but maybe that's all it is, perhaps maturity and experience are just fucking up in the small ways when no one notices and carrying on, not letting them see you sweat and blagging the decent roles. Getting through the big problems by shear power of will and the appearance of confidence.
As one of my old kayaking instructors used to say, "don't be good - be convincing!"

Gods know it feels like that at work sometimes.

*edited to add* In something of a tradition of the last few years, once I've got settled in the evenings I took one of my cigars (thanks for the Don Tomas Clasico, Smudge!!!) out to the front of the flat and had a moment of "thought" which this year involved a comfy chair, a glass of wine and the aforementioned smokable. I should mention that I get through, on average, 3 cigars a year, so I don't think I've got too much of a problem.
While sat on the moon chair, hoping for a break in the clouds to show the aurora that is supposed to be out there tonight, I thought "hmmmm, I feel in a 'poets' mood" and so, like every 'modern' guy I whipped out my phone, tuned into YouTube and pulled up the videos for "If...", "trust me on the sunscreen" and a couple of Roger McGough poems.
I felt decadent and almost educated with my choice of videos, but that was rather offset by the wine and cigar. I doubt there was any kind of point to this, so rather than leave it without a punchline I'll give you a couple of links that some might enjoy: Here and here.

Language

Kate sent something to me that I feel I must share, it's a little poem about the English language..

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

(some sources add a final couplet)

And yet to write it, the more I sigh,

I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.

Hope she doesn't mind me reposting it here. There's an American reading it here, but up here "dead" can indeed be pronounced "deed", and don't get me started on the Welsh year, here and ear, all of which are said "ur" or saucepan in the Townhill dialect.

One of the sources gives the following:

The poem...is attributed to T.S.Watt (1954) and appeared in the Guardian...

However, in the following publication it is attributed to Richard Krough, 
see: O'Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, W. and Katamba, F.1997. 
"Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction_, London: Longman, p.614"

Interestingly, following one of the links trying to find an author with whom to credit the work, I came across a version on the West Cumbria Dyslexic Association, which has an option at the top to very quickly change the background of the page. I'm wondering if this would be a quicker way to test if anyone does find particular backgrounds easier to read from. Or, in the case of Mac Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8 to invert the page, although I personally have issues reading white text on a black background (persistence of vision is a bugger) it does make the text stand out better.

Right, last bit of packing listening to Tori Amos on the radio before the hire car turns up, drive to Inverness via work, fly to Bristol, pick up another hire car, drive to Exeter for a course in winter forecasting/explosive cyclogenesis/polar lows then home in time for the last night of the Proms!

From the e-goat

Starkle starkle little twink
who the hell you are I think
I'm not under what you call
the alcofluence of incohol
I'm just a little slort of sheep
I'm not drunk like tinkle peep
I don't know who is me yet
but the drunker I stand here
the longer I get
Just give me one more drink
to fill me cup
'cuz I got all day sober
to Sunday up.

Liked this one.