Life Is Like A Song

Dazed by the bomb blast, ears ringing, head a shuffled deck of snapshots atop a suddenly 30 year old body. Oh my aching bones.

Desperate to be involved but shut out of proceedings by the very fact of it being my birthday, I listen for snippets. My own excitement has been mounting month by month until it's all I can think about. I glimpse updates over hunched shoulders. I cock my ear for spilled surprises. But really I know nothing. The sheer scale of it is all a complete shock.

And as I touch down on the Welsh hill which is a good 10 degrees colder than London, (sorry - I forgot about this) I see the site. Oh the dance tent, the Low-Lav, the tippee, the frame over the trampoline. Freak on a leash. I twinkle around the site, unsure of where to put myself. Talking too fast, running to show people round, to repeat the tour, to make the endless, rolling introductions.

A superfast summation from where I was standing:

Silver body paint, spandex, smiles till we ache, a scrum of people round my family table tucking into my dads pasta sauce, selected party heads coming to see my mum in the kitchen for tea and sympathy at various points throughout the weekend ('the things I know...'), the Low-Lav, the dancefloor knows no rest, a certain person leaning into the heart with a fork, digging for gold, the trampoline, the frame, the fat-suits, the headbuts, the unwise lack of sleep on Friday, a lowdown dirty lack of shame on Saturday, a Bloody-Mary Sunday, pass the parcel, the Madonna power-up, the punch, the campsite, the quad, the lamb stuffed with chickens, my mum and dad having it to Your Niece, hay-bales on fire, the many toasts, the biggest, shiniest, heaviest birthday card in the world (***HICKS***), the party reigniting for a 25 minute electro smash at 23:35 on Sunday, the endless tippee session, the daisy-chained block rockers, the U-turns, the purple book, the elation....

Guys I didn't know what to say when I was handed a BIKE. Words failed me. I'm sure it was obvious. THANK YOU SO MUCH. I was overwhelmed. And then, seeing that I was lost for words, I was surrounded by my favourite people, utterly crammed against the people I love most, all touching each other and consequently touching me as we slow danced to my favourite song in the world and sang at the tops of our voices while a I sobbed like a babe.

At Last. My love has come along. My lonely days are over. And life is like a song.

Yes it fucking is.

Thanks to all the people who came all the way to Wales.

Thanks to the Low-Fest Crew. You're the best in the west.

Thanks to all the DJs who rocked it.

Thanks for the bike. (The very bike I have been salivating over all year.)

Thanks for all the amazing presents.

Thanks Rina and Tim for being the best.

Thanks Rhys and Siw for being the best.

Thanks Carmen for making me the very best outfit.

Thanks to you all for making it the best birthday ever.

Andy Ellis. You rule.

So. Very. Lucky.

Onwards

It's over.

My heartstrings have been wrenched from my chest and strummed to the last,
I try to look back over my shoulder, recall the force of the blast,

And all I can see are the miles of the smiles
Of my friends, the survivors, waving from the banks,
As I sail away, the day after my birthday.

Today Is

Butterflies are flying round a big, echoey, fluttery expanse of bubbling excitement.

Quite nervous today as well as being mega-excited.

It's my 28th birthday. This day everyone must unsurely recount what has gone before? Chart the incline away from youth...

(It must be said before you continue reading that this post is of a vastly personal nature and you will not know WTF I'm talking about unless you know me. If you don't then I rejoice, for someone who does not know me has had the immense good fortune to stumble across my blog. If you do, then lucky you, you've been chosen as one of the few who I let in to the secrets of Foxy Loxy.)

Onwards with the quest to remember....Last year, The Boy and The Cubs cooked me dinner. Then I had a big dinner party with some of my favourite friends.

The year before it was a beach party in that weird bar on Boscombe front followed by an after-party in a big, empty house. Before that, there was a BIG ol' beach party followed by mini-golf.

Previous to that, a garden party at the beautiful Chine, a Summer Ball, followed by a beach party and sunny sex in an ants nest on the edge of a cliff. No jokes.

The year before that was The Bays in Consortium I think....hundreds of frisbies on the beach, Hawaiian blues from King Bong. Uh-oh.

Before that I've lost count. Can't think of any besides a garden party BBQ in Wales, and before that (my 17th) a drunken, 2 day free party near Shrewsbury with Brendan by my side.

For the record, I realise that all of them have been completely and utterly debauched. That, as I've come to say far too regularly, is evidently how I roll...

Maybe this year will be the last year of lashing myself quite so heavily. Who knows? Something in me is vaguely twitching for change, or at least a cleaner way of life. But the excitable techno-loving dancefloor part - which will always be alive and kicking it somewhere - keeps me wanting more and more.

As I approach 30 I'm getting more jittery. Less stable? There is nothing calm about the life I lead. And there is certainly a craving going on deep down to retreat to the country, to a house with a big garden and ivy on the walls and wild roses and maybe a baby or two....

Live in the now has always been my motto - so why can't I take my own advice?

Tomorrow Maybe, Today IS.