Re-marks on hitting 20

I'm 20 next Sunday.

Normally, I'd think to myself, like every birthday, that 'oh, it doesn't feel that different to 19, or even 12'.

But it really, really does. There's an old cricketer's adage that once reaching a half-century, or a century, you should re-mark your guard, and build your innings again. The equivalent to that tit in every Sunday League football side that shouts 'it's still 0-0!' Even though it's not 0-0. Baffling.

Spot the world-weary one

The last few months almost seem like they've been designed for me to re-mark my guard. I never hit a century in cricket, or a half-century, but I did once hit 20. So I'm re-marking here.

Figures from my childhood have been outed as horrible, vile monsters, cheating me into giving them my laughter and attention. Other lynchpins of my childhood have disappeared into glorious and deserved retirement, when you believed they'd go on forever. Whoever decides these things have even released my favourite novel as a film a week before my birthday, almost by way of drawing a line under the last twenty years.

I didn't write a blog when I was 10, mercifully. I was on holiday in Amsterdam. Canal trips and museums, not weed and whores, before you ask. But if I did, I'd have jotted down the following conversations 10-year-old me might have had with present-day me.

'Go on, Ed'.
'What?'
'There's The Great Gatsby. Take it by way of a birthday present'.
'But I don't want it. The film will be a let-down. There's no way they can transfer the floral prose of F. Scott Fitzgerald onto the big screen. Especially with Baz Luhrmann at the helm. Did you keep the receipt?'
'It's non-returnable. It's the Apollo in Leamington meeting Hollywood. They don't do receipts. Now go and watch it, and find a different book to define yourself by for the next ten years. Maybe some Ben Elton'.

'Oy, Ted'.
'What? Why are you calling me Ted? That's a name from my childhood'.
'Sir Alex Ferguson has retired. David Moyes has taken over'.
'What? David Moyes? He's still Preston manager, isn't he? I remember, they beat us in the play-offs, like, yesterday, and I'm still not quite over it, and-'
'Well, he's clearly got over it. He's Manchester United manager. And why haven't you got over it? You won a trophy. You saw it, with your sister. A generation to finally see Blues win a trophy whilst still being at school. That wiped away all the pain'.

'Ed. Wake up. Sports Report. The music. Start whistling'.
'Fantastic. Is that funny bloke still on it? Really like him. Proper, vintage voice. Old-school'.
'He's run into some trouble. Pleading guilty to some nasty crimes'.
'Oh, really? But I always loved driving home from the match with my Dad, laughing at him, wondering what on earth was going on in the match. I really hope it doesn't taint memories for people'.

'Ed. Ed. Why aren't you revising?'
'Revising? I don't need to revise. I'm going to be a footballer'.
'You're not. You were crap at football. You were crap at all sport. You dance instead'.
'Fuck off'.

In some ways it feels like someone's given me an Etch-a-Sketch as an early birthday present, imploring me into wiping it clean, and urging me to move on and find new things to define my life by, rather than Paul Scholes. I guess that can't be a bad thing. In other ways, it feels like Armageddon, as if the Millennium Bug will somehow shut down my body when I have to put a '2' as the first digit in my age.


You'd think, in a digital age, this sort of stuff wouldn't happen. I don't mean my body shutting down, that's nonsense. I mean feeling distanced from the past. I'm a couple of clicks away from locating 'Brum' on YouTube, or a Paddington audiobook. But even that's a contradiction. Clicks? YouTube? Audiobook?

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