It's 00:30 on the 25th of January 2004 as I write this by my watch.
So that makes me 24 then.
I've just got back from Wimbledon Dog track where I lost 30 quid betting on the favourite after a great run of form, but 30 quid was all I budgetted to lose anyway so I had a great time. Cheers to Tal for comin and makin my day.
After leaving the dog track I decided to stay on the bus for a while to Barnes station to buy my ticket in advance to save me a bit of time and money tomorrow on my way to police training. I buy the ticket most saturdays in advance but have been so hard at work all day on assignments that I haven't had the time to buy early, so I figured, as the ticket office was closed, that to get 10 minutes more in bed in the morning I would wait til the clock ticked over to the 25th of January and buy my ticket from the machine.
Gettin there a bit early, I noticed that the time on the permit to travel machine read 11:48 which was about 3 minutes behind my watch. I checked the clock on the platform and it read 11:52. As you'd expect the only machine on which the time truly matters didn't have a clock on it. I thought that I'd play it safe and took a walk up the road whistling a merry tune and trying to forget that I'd just blown 30 quid on the dogs.
Returning at midnight, I decided that I'd rather be safe than sorry so I walked up and down the platform for 5 minutes like a vagrant until the clock on the platform read 00:05 and a half and the permit to travel machine read 00:02 before stickin my £4.50 in the ticket machine.
...and yes you saw this comin readers. I got issued with a ticket for the 24th of January time-stamped 23:59. So I spent the first 5 minutes of my 24th year of living stuck in the freezing cold getting ripped off by a machine. Fuckers.
And talkin of fuckers and keepin on the birthday tip, the next corridor which houses my beautiful if vain female accomplice, went out tonight to a club in Putney. Thing is they actually went out for my birthday.
Meanwhile as I say, I went to the dogs with Tarik and had a thoroughly good time thanks.
On my way out the door, I caught one of the girls next door sayin on the stairs "I don't really know why he's being so antisocial" - of course being on my way downstairs at the time and on my way out for a good time with my real friend, I had to ask who they were talkin about and of course it was me and she says "I just don't get it we organised this last week for you and you decide at the last minute to go out with your mate and leave us to go out to this club without the birthday boy" to which I replied "I never agreed to go in the first place. I fuckin hate clubbin" and went on my merry way to the dogs.
It does strike me as a little absurd that people who don't know me try and persuade me to do something I don't particularly like on a day that is really something I don't like to make a big deal of anyway. I fuckin hate birthdays.
Time spent with real friends is priceless. Time spent pretending you're having fun in a loud shitty place with drunken people is my idea of hell. Don't get me any presents for fucks sake.
