It's my birthday and I'll nap if I want to.

It is my birthday today. At 5.30pm it will mark 28 years since my mum was rushed into hospital on a daytrip to Kettering and I was plucked out in the middle of an emergency caesarean operation despite the ridiculous odds stacked against me. I do always joke that arriving six weeks early rather accounts for the fact that I'm always late now, making up for my overpunctuality.

All babies seem to hit the ground bawling, with a certain energy and babyish charisma that draws people in from a great distance to coo and admire. All of that charm fades rather quickly, and the energy decays with a mildly respectable half-life which I am already noticing having its effect.

I do think that you get to a certain point - and forgive me sounding old and weary here, but as I am in fact old and weary it's OK - where you relish a good rest, but you use that rest to be more reflective, perhaps a little less impulsive. Where the grand sum of your mistakes is translated into wisdom, ostentatiously ignored by the younger generations you want to help with your sage expression of life's meaning.

Perhaps the right approach to such an occasion would be to get sloshed into oblivion, but I shall face it like a man. And eat loads of chocolate.