Today I am forty. It reads as a significant number but only because it’s got a zero in the base we are used to thinking in. I may as well be 28_b16 if we counted in hexadecimal, or 50_b8 in octal or even 101000_b2 binary (though those last two are also round—how about 34_b12 in base 12?). The point is that it’s not actually a special point; just another trip around the star.

Yet it feels like it needs marking. This is of course the age Jan never reached, though I’ve been older than she will ever be for a month or more. It is the age that in youth seems such a long time off, a point that can never be reached. Yet it is reached, while not looking. And that not looking is important; life is not about round numbers, it is the things that happen while not staring at the time. So lets forget that its a silly number and get drunk instead!