I begin with a four now

It's true. Being born at the very end of "The Summer of Love" means I am forty today.

It doesn't upset me.

Some people have done and will do an amount of gentle teasing - one of my oldest friends, with whom I went to school and who is exactly four months older than I, sent me a Shakespearen snippet text message to describe my forty-year-old looks to me:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
...
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days?

It didn't upset me. In fact it delighted me (and I suppose I got what I deserved since I sent her similar Byronic message when she turned 36:

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others hath it ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!)

Anyway, poetry aside. I am not going to be one of these people who turn thirty-seven (or indeed, thirty-six) several times over. I have been given lovely presents, and my Spanish friend pulled my ears forty times (twenty on each ear) - a Spanish tradition, I am told. Apparently, they have the same tradition in Mexico, but the ears are pulled upwards.

I begin with a four now. I must be a grown-up.