Frustrated

About everything, really.

While I was putting off doing work yesterday morning ("I'll just watch a bit of telly while I drink a coffee ....") I saw a programme hidden away in the minor Sky channels about thrill-seekers. It went on about the dopamine reflex blah blah and showed lots of film of people jumping off cliffs with nothing but some string and a large piece of fluorescent cloth to prevent them from dying (but they always wear crash helmets, don't they? What's the point? Not going to save you from shattering every other bone in your body when you hit the very hard ground at a hundred and forty miles an hour. Anyway.).

It got me thinking. I am, as you all ought to be aware by now (fucking well keep up at the back, why don't you?), approaching my fifth decade. In, by my calculations, 56 days, I will have my fortieth birthday. Note I did not say 'celebrate'.

I should have done all the stuff I dreamed of by now. I will be physically unable to do many of them in a few years. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to B.A.S.E. jump, I don't have that much of a dopamine receptor inhibition. (That sounded good didn't it? Almost medical. I think it's actually right, as well). I am toward that end of the spectrum, though: I do like a bit of an adrenalin sport, me. I've done a lot of rock climbing in my time, until arthritic fingers stopped me; when I'm on holiday, I enjoy finding high sea cliffs to jump off into the sea from; I ski and drive far too fucking fast to be safe. You can't play rugby every week, as a forward, if you're a wallflower.

But being nearly 40 isn't about have I done a bungee jump yet. Oh, all right, it is, but it isn't just about that. What about all my other life goals, though? The proper ones, the long-term ones. The ones that I thought I'd never possibly achieve, when I was living in a squat in a Hackney Wick tower block circa 1989, examining my navel, for day after day.

Lovely wife, check. Male progeny to continue family line, check. Female progeny to spoil rotten, check. Dream job, check. Own boss, check. Own house, check. Nice car, check.

Mmmmm. All check. So it's just stuff like 'learn to kite surf' that are missing after all. Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. I mean, it's all very well having life goals of 'own a ski chalet in French Alps' but that conflicts with the life goal of 'do not be a slave to career, and always have time for the kids'. It's only money. You can't take it with you.

So, perhaps being 40 is all about bungee jumping. Work-type things are just the filling in between the adrenalin episodes, and if you happen to enjoy the filling in, so much the better. That's one way of looking at it, I suppose.

Thinking about it again, there are quite a few adrenaliny-type rushes that can be had at any age. I'm currently trying to organise going to Pamplona to run with the bulls this summer, as a late 40th present to myself. Everyone I talk to thinks that's nuts. (Except Flash Pete, who swears he's coming too. Hope he does, it won't be the same without him). Hey, though, ask yourself: the fucking great beast can do a hundred metres in 5 seconds and weighs a hundred and ten stone. And those horns are real, and sharp. And I am going to trap myself, with thousands of other people, in a narrow cobbled street, with several of them. Imagine, then, once the beasts have passed safely by, you turn to your mate, to anyone else in the street, eyes shining, shouting, screaming, death cheated, alive, more alive than ever. Imagine the adrenalin rush of that. Can't wait. And they do it every day for a week! And they do it first thing in the morning, so you can spend the rest of the day, and night, getting drunk!

Tell you what, I've decided that I can turn this whole thing on it's head. I shall triumphantly use this horrible event as an excuse to behave as childishly as possible. In a way only a real grown up can.