Turning Twenty-One, And Did I Mention I’m Twenty-One?

I’m twenty-one. :)

Friday night was the UCL Debating Society Foundation Dinner, where we all dress up for a black-tie dinner, and invite MPs to debate the motion This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty’s Government (Tories proposing, Labour opposing) after that. It all sounds wonderfully civilized until they start accusing each other of shagging chickens on Clapham Common. Freedom of speech be praised.

On Saturday morning I was led stumbling and blindfolded through London to be temporarily deserted in Hyde Park in the rain while my friends ran off and hid. Once everyone had been found, we decided that a good lunch would be better than my further public humiliation, so we went to Magic Wok in Bayswater. My fortune cookie told me “You will grow old gracefully.”

I had meant to meet Nick after that for coffee, but ended up rather hideously late, and he left after waiting half an hour in the rain. I slunk home guiltily to find CDs (Goldfrapp as gift, Stereo MCs returned, and Kruder & Dorfmeister on loan) and a sweet unblaming note in my pigeon hole.

Dinner was at Navajo Joe’s, Ken’s treat. After a fleeting appearance at Russ’s sister’s party, we set off for The End, where Gilles Peterson, Peter Kruder, Layo and Bushwacka! awaited. From here, strange things happened to Ken, who’s either really having an existential crisis, or has read The New York Trilogy too many times.

For posterity’s sake, here’s a summary of the stuff that made up my twenty-first birthday:

Birthday serenades:

  • soon after midnight from the debaters
  • my family over the phone, with my father considerably out of tune and time
  • after lunch from the Singaporeans
  • after dinner from Russ and Ken
  • on Sunday from my hallmates

Birthday cakes:

  • chocolate topped with flakes of white and milk chocolate (lunch)
  • brownie nestled among votive candles (dinner)
  • chocolate jam sponge (Sunday)

A pleasantly manageable amount of alcohol.

Satisfyingly large (and expensive) meals.

Presents:

Good friends who made time for me. Special mention to three in particular:

  • Esther and Shoop, for deciding I was too hopeless at planning anything, and taking it upon themselves to throw something together. They’re darlings.
  • Russ, for bravely facing physical exhaustion, acute work crisis, and large levels of inconvenience and expense to be that often quiet but always appreciated presence nearby at the debate, the lunch, the dinner and the club. Thanks to him for being wonderful and then some.

I’m twenty-one. :)

Birthday Bits

I got my birthday card from my family today. My mother wrote: “Live with responsibility; walk in love.”

Given that I’ve attended 0 out of 6 possible hours of classes this week, and had to struggle today to restrain myself from shouting “Thar she blows!” after a fat bitch waddling on the pavement who nearly shoved me into the path of a speeding bus, those words are rather chastening.

Nick and I have reached an extremely convenient and mutually beneficial agreement about our respective birthday presents to each other. We somehow realized that we were both giving each other CDs that we also wanted for ourselves, in the shockingly conniving hope that after gift-giving, gift-borrowing would soon follow. So to make things easier and more efficient, we gave each other permission in advance to rip the CDs before giving them.

Sorta Glum About Twenty-One

Elsewhere in this site I write about being mostly “boringly well-adjusted and secure”. I should say that one chink in this smug little encasement is birthdays. I turn 21 in 10 days. It’s stressing me out.

The eternal question is how I’m supposed to spend it. There’s always this pressure to do something exceptionally decadent and exhibitionistic. Throw the parrrdddeeee of the year. Kill a couple billion liver cells. Chill with God on the astral plane. Surpass the Kama Sutra. Oh, and another thing: it’s all supposed to be incredibly social; your friends are meant to turn out in droves to take embarrassing photos of you getting utterly wasted, and carry you between bed and toilet bowl as required once you’ve truly succumbed to the ecstasies of the moment. Once you’ve come of age.

But my friends right now are scattered around the world. Lots are in Singapore. A significant number are in the US. A couple are here. And even if they were all in one place, most of them wouldn’t get along. The A’level scientist classmates would be incredibly helpful, and clean up afterwards. The O’level convent classmates would sit in the corner and laugh maniacally. The arty eccentrics would write and perform a commemorative interpretive dance-poem. The Singaporean debaters would lounge on comfortable furniture and make fun of everybody. The UCL debaters would be getting drunk wherever the alcohol was. And I would be running around desperately between groups trying to make sure everyone was having fun, and having none myself.

Birthdays are meant to be an affirmation that your birth was worthwhile, a celebration of your life so far, a symbol of hope for your life in the future. Can all that be captured in a party?

For my 21st birthday I want to slalom through the Northern Lights the way children run through floor fountains. I want to ignore the realities of clouds and snuggle up in a fluffy one somewhere between the ground and the stars with a radio which can only just catch the frequencies so that everything sounds tinny and otherworldly. I want to redefine science so that molecules don’t merely move up and down in response to the energy transmission of a wave but always at its crest, and then I want to transmogrify myself into rain and explore the waters of the world. I want to go to Tolkien’s Middle Earth and beat the shit out of Gollum. I want to go to a jazz club with Dean Moriarty.

I want to skydive with a parachute that jams until just before landing, and spend ten thousand metres of free fall realizing just how much I still have to do with this life.