Today ....

... is the day that I celebrate my Birthday. It is not the day that I was born. That date sits a couple of days before Christmas and is not a great day to have a Birthday. As a consequence, a few years back I decided to have an official birthday but could never find a day that seemed suitable.

After all, if you have 364 other days to choose from which one do you go for? Obviously you can weed out the crappy ones such as those in the same month as your day of birth and obviously you don't want to clash with any of your  friends or families anniversaries or other religious festivities but that is still going to give you a good 250 dates to choose from.

I settled on the 23rd March. The fact that I was born on the 23rd of a different month is pure coincidence. The reason I chose this date is because back in 2008 I had what some people refer to as  a "life changing experience". I would rather refer to it as a killer after dinner story.

Those who know me really well know a lot more detail than I am prepared to record here but back on 23rd March 2008 after a busy day tiling the kitchen floor I had a major headache. The sort that comes on very rapidly and results in incoherence and vomiting. I later found out that I had suffered a sub-arachnoid brain haemorrhage. To cut a long story short these are a killer. 40% of people who have them don't make it to the hospital and, of those who do, 40% leave the hospital severely disabled.  I survived pretty much unscathed which means that I am one of the lucky 36%. It took the best part of 6 months to get back to work and a full year before I was back to "normal" but here I am with a great after dinner story* and the perfect day to select as my official birthday**.

So there you have it. Am I a changed person as a result of nearly shuffling of this mortal coil? No, not really. I do know I am lucky and I do know that every day should be treasured. I also have very little tolerance for people who think that a work deliverable is the most important thing in the world.

As for today I have been bogged down in arranging a series of meetings to get my project's quality rating improved. To be honest I had totally forgotten that it was my "official b'day" until a card arrived from 30%'s mum and dad.

That leads me to my final point. At the age of 47 I have pretty much got past the excitement of a birthday and perhaps having most of them overshadowed by Christmas is the reason why. I am sure that 30% and I will do something nice in the not too distant future and I am sure that at some point I will think of something that I would like as a gift. But there is no rush as I joke that I am now immortal as none of the gods wanted to take me 3 years ago in 2008.

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* I have another one about a "Lads trip to Amsterdam" and a live sex show but I need to be very drunk to tell that one.

** Probably not a good idea to tell me you have a bad headache. Mine lasted 5 weeks and they used to move me on to morphine at night when I had reached prescription limits of codeine and paracetamol. Incidentally the drugs only took the edge off the pain I had to wait for my body to clear the haemorrhaged blood before the pain dissipated.