Pause & Rewind: 30 days till I'm 30

This is the bucket-list for 30 year olds that is currently available online. As today I am within a month of being an age which for once I cannot dismiss a “just a number”, here is my own life as judged against the apparent modern standard:


1. Bungee-jumped in a Third World country
I’ve lived and worked in a third world country, to the extent that I would not call them as such (I think “Late Developing Country” is the mot de riguer, or as I saw the other day: surely all countries in the world are still developing?). I had a holiday booked in Nepal at a bungee jump camp, but had to cancel as I was deployed to respond to the Pakistan 2010 flooding. However, I did a sky dive close to Hull at university. Hull qualifies as Third World.


2. Pulled pints
Yes. Can’t remember the name of the pub, but it was in an awful town in North Somerset (Nailsea). In the end it was more depressing than working the morning shift in the petrol station (my other summer job).


3. Passed driving test
Passed first time aged 21, but never owned a car and still have recurring nightmares about causing a car crash (my feet grow too large to be able to push individual pedals and I cause a crash, inevitably with a lorry transporting some kind of chemical weapons).

4. Got a proper job
To the extent that trying to do so has probably dominated the past decade of my life. I also pay a pension and mortgage, so what I do must be proper enough.

5. Inhaled
I went to Amsterdam back when you could still openly buy weed in a coffee shop (those were the days). All the lights in the public toilet were UV (apparently to make it harder to see your veins). I don’t remember much else, though we tried to make it a “cultural” trip by going to the Van Gogh museum.

6. Been kicked out of a party
Not since I was 28. I was accused of stealing a cardboard cut-out John McCain from and was too drunk to recall whether it was the case or not (though as I did not have a life size John McCain with me at home I felt innocent).  Apparently, it was the Oxfam Country Director…

7. Had a scrape with the police
Was asked to “move on” by the police following rowdy behaviour after the South Manchester table tennis championship dinner (we were Division 3 winners, and I had represented the team once and lost all my matches to a team of highly skilled wheelchair paralympians).


8. Bedded a royal
Tried to speak with Princess Eugenie inTajikistan and failed. Of the other Royals I’ve met, I wouldn’t want to bed her father, nor Princess Anne.

9. Drunk a 1982 Grand Cru Classé
Unfortunately not.


10. Been to Glastonbury

No. It used to bother me. Now I just think that people my age will culturally do whatever Radio 1 and BBC 2 tells them to.

11. Left home
So effectively that both my parents have left my home town which means I can never really go back.

12. Holidayed in the Caribbean

Lived 1 hour from the Honduran Caribbean coast for a year. I’ve even modelled ice cream on a deserted Caribbean island.

13. Thrown a party for 200

I had 140 at my wedding for which I was on the executive team of the organising committee and personally insisted that the dj play Boney M’s “Rasputin”. 200 people can come to my funeral but I’m not going to take on anything bigger than my wedding whilst I’m still alive.

14. Appeared in a national newspaper

Appeared in the local newspaper in York, having “discovered” a rare edition of Alice in Wonderland whilst working in the local Oxfam bookstore. Actually I didn’t find it. It was donated, and they were scared of having it stolen as it was worth more than the entire stock in the shop. My “discovery” was an attempt  to get free advertisement as they couldn’t put it in the shop window.

15. Fallen in love
And got married.


16. Fallen out of love
Thank God. Don’t even want to predict where that would have taken me otherwise...


17. Appeared on television
I opened my GCSE results live on GMTV (6 A* and 5A), and was interviewed for local Granada TV when I received my A-Level results (2A and 2B [and ½ a D for Chemistry though I choose to forget that]).


18. Been on a road trip
As a child, I used to regularly drive from Manchester to Bognor Regis, which in the days before the Newbury Bypass was a road trip. I also once drove from Manchester to Valencia in a heavily loaded car in 48 hours as co-pilot. Unfortunately I now suffer from a painful lower back and supreme impatience which makes long transport journeys unpleasant.>


19. Lived abroad
I live abroad.

20. Had pretentious arguments about philosophy until the small hours
I studied philosophy as a student which is a very good way of avoiding arguing pretentiously about philosophy until the small hours as:

a) real philosophy is very hard to understand and further grasp, and so those who I discussed it with very quickly won the argument.

b) real philosophy is highly abstract and quickly loses all relation to applied human experience. It would be tough to drag out “what is a chair”? until the small hours.

21. Started a novel

Living in Honduras, I came up with the opening line of my first novel (it would have to be based in a country where mangoes grow on trees). Living in Tajikistan, I started a novel and got to page three during a particularly depressive phase before realising that it was an autobiography in which I was already predicted my mid-life crises and professional downfall. I will never finish the remaining 297 pages as I am resigned to never being able to write a book that I would want to read myself.

22. Been in a band Not in a rock band, as I found all teenage rock banks very boring. Why listen to inferior 17 year-olds imitating Radiohead, when you could listen to the new Radiohead album (clearly I was not a good 17 year old myself). Still, I was in a brass band, a concert band, and a swing band which was sufficiently controversial as I played the French horn transposing the trombone part (shouldn’t have been allowed in a swing band).


23. Taken part in a demonstration because your friends did Unfortunately I think if this has happened, it was the other way around.


24. Joined the scouts
I was a scout troop leader! But I rose too quickly through the ranks, and burned out due to the lack of promotion opportunities. Also the realisation that the choice of the wolf as my troop animal  was not my decision, but forced on my as the scout group happened to have the wolf badge was a huge source of disenchantment.


25. Seen New York
Not until the UN pays me to.

26. Bought a house
Have signed a contract on an apartment in Barcelona. Woody Allen eat your heart out. Will have bought it by the time I’m 40.

27. Attended four weddings and a funeral

Just. Only been taken to hospital directly from one wedding.

28. Reinvented yourself
Am still in the process of inventing myself. Shaved my hair short at 17 and have never let it grow back since.


29. Inherited

Male-pattern baldness from my father. Thankfully didn’t inherit a disposition to haemorrhoids from my mother’s side.

30. Raved on a Thai beach
I hate rave music to the extent that I think I have only attended one rave in Barcelona and hated it.