Birthday Man lives to tell another tale

[Peter McNiff]

No, it’s true, this is not fiction, though I tell a porky or two about my age for be it young or old such knowledge tends to colour judgement so, technically, a part of this narrative falls into the realm of romance, for I am in emphatic denial concerning the number of years I have been on this earth.

The French overlook the Seven Stages of Man and try to tell us there are only three; of which the Third Age begins at forty-five but really, I gave up running and, come to think of it, jogging at forty, except for the horizontal variety, which reminds me of a question that George Bernard Shaw put to a Parisienne in her eighty-eighth year: ‘At what age do you cease to fall in love?’

To which she replied with a smile.

In my head, of course, I am thirty-six years of age and in my fiction age has no boundaries, as for retirement (which I regard as among the most offensive words in the dictionary if ever it be suggested to me) — can you imagine having a wonderful life working away at a keyboard or being behind a camera, or dipping a brush into paint, or jotting down an idea on a notebook with  the sharp end of a 2b pencil — that I could tolerate anyone who dares order me to retire?

I still fall in love at the sight or sound of a beautiful woman for the way she walks, or for something she says, or the state of her mind revealed by a poem or book or letter she writes; or by the sound of her voice if she sings Puccini or plays the piano.

And I am still of the age when the woman I love, and so many others for the briefest of moments walking by, who returns the look that I have in my eye.

[Peter McNiff]

Many thanks for all your kind wishes, as I write on the morning after a lovely birthday party with family, at which I ate and drank too much, and sang for my supper The Old Triangle and right now, its jingle jangle goes off whenever the cat meows. Peter.

[Teresa]

With this six, you are one of the sexiest men alive.  Of course it's well written and I adore the playful tone and youth which for some like you (and hopefully me, even when I'm a raisin hunched over a walker), is an inherent spirit and perhaps gets even younger with age.  And any soul who hangs on to romance remains young in my book.  It's critical to loving life, and that's hugely sexy.  Big fave.    

[Robert Crisman]

Paragraphs two, three, and four make it for me.

[Sandra Davies]

Hurrah!!!   And I so agree about 'colouring judgement' but also am too basically honest among friends ... sometimes