People who bought me a birthday present:

• The in-laws (2 soft rock guitar tab books/hand-knitted jumper)
  
• Generous friends (decanter)
  
• My mum and dad (2 pairs of pants, sizes XL and L)
  
• Ms Jones (Internet fridge (awaiting delivery))
  
• The Cheerful Builder (bottle of wine)
  
• My grandmother (paying for future services of piano delivery man)

People who did not buy me a birthday present:

• The LTLP (unable to find suitable purchase)
  
• My sister (‘to follow’)
  
• Rest of family (live abroad therefore excused)
  
• Everybody else in world (do not know me/do know me but did not know it was my birthday/do not like me enough to buy me a birthday present/are imaginary internet people/live abroad therefore excused)

It’s one of the milestone ones today.

The one after which I can no longer truthfully claim to be in my ‘early thirties’.

Mid-thirties it is, then. Turning into an old git was quicker than I thought. Bummer! There goes my carefully worked-out blog concept.

I appear to be taking this quite well, after the drama-queen five-year period that led up to my thirtieth. I’ve had no periods of black depression about it, no waking up in cold sweats. My eyes seem OK in the mirror, no wildness or staringness or anything.

But these things can creep up on you. Perhaps later on I will chop the LTLP into pieces with a big axe.

Fortunately I won’t be celebrating on my own. The Cheerful Builder will be here for one. And Mick the Sparks.

(Note – one of the advantages of a blog is that you can use a phrase like ‘Sparks’ with the utmost offhand nonchalance. As opposed to verbal communication, where it sounds embarrassingly forced when used by someone who has clearly never been on a building site in his life).

Even my in-laws are driving up for the weekend. This promises to be the best birthday ever.

On Tuesday I will post about my surprise party.

I did start an Amazon wishlist but I kind of think that’s the equivalent of hanging around in bars poncing drinks off strangers. You need to be better-looking to get away with it. Or look like an easy lay. And I am neither. Tsk! At my age! Well I can tell you, if you think you can buy me presents in exchange for sex then you have come to the WRONG BLOG and I will not change my mind about this even if you all send me pictures of yourself naked (email address is on the right, females only please, I will be in town Thursday and Friday if that’s convenient for you).

So, in the words of the great Boothby Graffoe:

“If I can’t have you

And a million pounds

And a house in Rome

And lots of cars

I don’t want anything at all.”

I’ll think I’ll do a bit of raging against the dying of the light, then get myself some breakfast.

This is not a political blog.

But this ‘New Labour’ government has no understanding whatsoever about the needs of the countryside. It’s a joke.

The fact is, that we NEED somebody in power to take local services seriously. To understand that the ‘countryside’ is not this twee little holiday resort for people in Range Rovers, but a living, breathing community of working folk with relatively low earnings, and some quite large social problems.

As it is, I’m desperate. The filter for the Dyson has broken and there is nowhere within twenty miles that can sell me a new one.

You might ask how I am expected to live like this. But we’ve learned to adapt and not expect help or sympathy from London.

I can feel my lungs clogging up with dust already. But do they give you Dyson filters on the NHS? Don’t bother checking – I can tell you the answer is ‘no’. And all that’s going to happen is that I’ll need to be admitted for a lung operation, and that will cost the country more in the long term.

It’s just insania.

Where do my taxes go??? I’ll tell you, as I got a very clear leaflet from the English Democrats Party pushed through the door yesterday.

“By paying £10 billion extra to Scotland under the Barnett Formula, Scots now have better [long list of better things] – all at the expense of the long suffering English Taxpayer!”

I have never heard this explained so clearly before, even though I know quite a bit about Scottish politics from listening to Marillion.

They are bleeding Britain dry, with their Barnett Formulae, monopoly on New Years Eves and breakaway separatist blog web rings. Although I do like the accent, and the Inspector Rebus books.

I read the leaflet again. It seems plausible.

“Not Right, Not Left, Just English” is their slogan.

Although I think the “But Mainly Right” bit probably dropped off at the typesetters.

Why’s he doing it?

Gordon, I mean. Gordon Ramsay.

I mean – the man’s a genuine superstar. Michelin stars. Huge popular respect. He’s achieved a deserved position at the top of his game, is judged on his own terms and has stormed passed the barrier where he could have sat back and traded on his name.

So why ‘Hell’s Kitchen’? Why?

It would be like Sir Bobby Robson doing an embarrassing crisps commercial.

Oops. Bad analogy.

But it’s all I can think of, as I sit here, my brain oozing out onto the carpet.

I think I’ll probably like the show by the end of it, as long as Amanda whatsherface, clearly the most spoilt and self-centred person in the entire world, gets voted off in the early stages. I’d watch anything with Al Murray in it, and it does thrill me in a truly misogynistic and juvenile way that Abi Titmuss is proving to be an absolute angel in the kitchen.

Why?

Why?

Why make yourself look a twat in front of Anthony Worrell-Thompson?

I could turn up there stark bollock naked except for an amusing Warner Bros tie and a copy of Jordan’s autobiography taped over my privates, and Anthony Worrell-Thompson would still be the bigger cunt out of the both of us.

Why?

Somebody? Please?

I have been up in the roof, treating timbers.

Had I been feeling more excitable today, I might have started this post thus:

My joists are riddled with woodworm!!!

But I’m knackered. It’s hot and stifling up there. Too tight to pay for a proper woodworm person, and feeling slightly emasculated at my minimal contribution to the building work so far, I decided to Do It Myself.

The can of Woodworm Stuff had various alarming messages on it. “Use only in well-ventilated areas” being the most problematical. In the end I also bought an exciting-looking mask, that claims to protect me from fumes and hazardous particles.

There surely must be an interesting use for this, once my mundane chores are over.

The next time I get the bus into Fakenham I will carry it with me, in case of ricin attack.

Confusingly, the Stuff also claims to be “bat friendly”. I don’t know much about bats, but I would imagine that our respiratory systems aren’t that different. So what am I doing struggling up the ladder attired as Bill Murray in Ghostbusters?

The fact is that I am better with words than with worms. I feel good about getting the job done, but I have to accept that a proper woodworm person would have finished in a quarter of the time. Nor would he have kicked the pot of treatment over.

But it’s done, and I’m off for a shower.

If you listen hard enough, you can hear the sound of a thousand woodworm croaking their last.

I stayed in a hotel on Saturday.

Courtesy of some friends, the most generous people in the entire world (it’s true – I’ve checked), we wallowed in five star luxury in St. James’s.

Darling.

I like two types of hotel. Really, really good ones that you rarely find in England, or cheap and rough motels of the American model. I will accept the Holidaypremiertravelinn experience if I’m using it just for a place to crash out and somebody else is paying. I like staying in pubs, for obvious reasons, and rough seaside B&Bs appeal to my puritan and seedy streak.

The hotels I hate are the really, really mediocre ones that pretend to be really, really good ones.

You can identify these by two factors:

After being patronised by the check-in assistant you find that your room, whilst ostensibly plush, contains at least one fitting that has been bodged at an angle that isn’t quite straight. There are also two old rawlplugged holes in the bathroom wall, that nobody has bothered to make good.

There is a sign hoping that you share their concerns about the environment, so possibly won’t want your towels washed every day.

It’s this second thing that gets me so livid. The fucking weasels – yeah right, it’s not about ECONOMICS, perchance? Show me that you invest in eco washing powder, recycle all your plastics and glass, and pay and train your staff more than the bare, bare, Dickensian minimum, and I’ll chip in with my laundry contribution. Otherwise I’m going to piss on each towel individually then hold a dirty protest in the bedchamber before I leave.

Anyway, as I say, this was a genuinely good hotel. They were happy to give me clean towels without dripping hypocricy about it, and in return I did not soil the walls.

I’ve been reading some trendy London blogs recently, and may have got slightly maudlin on occasions about missing the big city.

So we checked in, ambled through Bond Street, went to a restaurant, clothes-shopped in Selfridges, took a taxi back to the hotel, watched the end of the day’s test match on the room’s widescreen TV, took a glass of champagne, dined in the private room, retired to the American Bar and tasted malt whiskies until the early hours.

It felt good to see the real London.

Returning to the cottage yesterday, the lounge still uninhabitable and the whole place stinking of wood treatment, I would have given anything for a nice hotel room. Even one with previously-enjoyed towels. (By me.)

I folded the end of the bog roll into a triangle and charged the LTLP £8.95 for bringing her a small sandwich, but it just wasn’t the same.

So this summer I SHALL be blissed out in a muddy field, music wafting gently over me, cider stains down the front of my inappropriate tie-die garb.

Apologies to those of you who missed out this year. Who sat on the phone for hour upon frustrating hour, credit card in hand, playing through all the bands in your head, desperate to be connected to place your order.

I don’t want to be smug.

But nya nya na-na naa.

And this year’s lineup has to be the best for years.

Jerry Donahue! Earl Okin! Legendary morris dance/rock fusion supergroup Morris On!

Jethro Tull!

And of course the mighty Fairport Convention. One of Q Magazine’s ‘50 bands to see before you die’. Although I’d be disappointed if I went first.

I take the mandolin from the wall and do a few strums in joyous celebration. Widdledee-widdledee-deee!

Yes, I love the Cropredy Folk Festival.

I feel that a weight of anxiety has been lifted from me, knowing that I’ve been one of the lucky few. I clasp my tickets greedily, wondering where I can hide them. Numbers 00081-00084.

It would be devastating if they were pocketed by some chancer posing as a meter reader, and resold for a fortune on Ebay.

I should emphasise that their website did not crash at any point. The Glastonbury IT people can learn from this, should they not be too proud.

I’ve not managed to get to Cropredy for some years, as it clashes with the Edinburgh Festival. I need to check whether they’ve got Internet access these days so I can provide an act-by-act blog.

I know you’ll want to hear all about it.