Here's to the birthday boy
Twenty two years ago, I was digging a hole in the garden for some nicotianas. A little while later, I sat down in the house and had some leftover spaghetti bolognese at six o'clock. It must have been off, I thought, because I got indigestion pretty soon afterwards. I rang my friend and said: 'I think I'm all right but I feel a bit weird. I wonder if you ought to come over?' She was round like a shot. Because, you see, I was a week away from my 'expected date of confinement'. 'I'm sure sure it's nothing,' I said to my friend. 'You idiot,' she said. 'You're in labour.' So we flew over the top road, up and down, past the glorious views of the sea, the grassy knolls, the tree-topped hills and the patchwork blanket of fields, the Devil's Nine Stones, the old radio station and a roundabout called Monkey's Jump. I walked about a bit in hospital but nothing much happened, until I opened a magazine with a full page,...
