The secret of eternal youth...

Recently I was discussing with a colleague how our respective weekends went. She's happily married and described the idyll of family life, kids, breakfast, Tescos, nappies and vomit... hmmm.

I am recently separated and now have the doubtful pleasure of mixing part time fatherhood with the single life... On weekends I don't see my son this usually means, Breakfast, Tescos, beer, ciggies and vomit...

As I described a particularly beery weekend she asked how I managed it, she has a big boozy night and needs the rest of the weekend to recover, an entire weekend on the ale was she felt simply impossible, especially as she's now 41!

Her problem you see is that she hasn't discovered the secret of eternal youth, for by her measurement of age I too am 41.... but I'm not, for I have discovered that elusive secret. Eternal youth is mine.

You see, on my 29th birthday I was shocked, I was embarking on my 30th year yet I felt no older than I had when I was 19... I didn't want to be in that same position years hence so resolved to discover the secret of eternal youth. Now you may well say that this is a little ambitious, the conundrum which has perplexed the worlds best thinkers and scientists for several millenia, the problem that kings have literally offered their kingdoms if the finest brains of their respective ages could find the hallowed formula....

Yet I was determined to solve the conundrum, armed only with... well actually, my own intellect.

Clearly to regular readers of this blog this may seem a tad overambitious, although the Internet was in around at the time, so I could call upon that prodigious resource... the only problem was I had neither Internet access nor any interest in computers... in fact my only real interests at that point were booze, cigarettes, booze, women and booze.... in that order.

You may well take the view that the prospects for my quest were weak... but undaunted I began my search for a solution, believing fervently it would lie at the bottom of a recently drained glass.

Regrettably... no luck. But I have a "never say die" attitude, and so continued my search and after looking into the bottom of many glasses, reading the beery runes... and experiencing the beery runs... Eureka! I had it, the secret of eternal youth, well the secret of eternal "29ness" anyway.

The difficulty with aging is that on the anniversary of their birth the whole world adds one year to their age, hence they advance remorselessly into middle age, old age, dotage etc... Not me, ever since 1996 (my 29th birthday) I have on each subsequent birthday added one year to my date of birth!!!

Simple, on my last birthday, 24th Februaury my date of birth advanced one year to 24th February 1978, this birthday I added 1 year to make it 1979... eternally 29... and not a grey hair in sight...

Provided I keep away from the mirror....

© OddBat 2008