birthday fun

- It's two o'clock in the morning the day after my birthday, and I am standing in Dan's bedroom with my arms flailing around. To my right, Dan is doing the same. Victoria stands opposite, and she is bent double with laughter. Eva is shouting "Now!" at me. At that moment an inflatable globe hits from me, as if from nowhere, square in the face. The room flashes repeatedly from dark to light.

- My birthday is passed now, and my hangover fully faded, so I can look back objectively on another really pleasant anniversary spent in the company of my friends. On Friday I went for a quick drink with AS and Rich, which was ace, and met up with Dan, Morgan and Ant too before I dashed out for dinner with Siobhan, and then on Saturday night pretty much my whole group of friends accompanied me out to the Crescent for a night of drinking and cheering - and lots of lovely and extremely well-chosen present-giving, too.

- Lots of bird-related presents this year, which is wonderful. I appear to be fast developing a reputation as the bird-man of Brighton, although I think it vital that I point out that my love of my feathered friends is primarily aesthetic and cultural rather than ornithological; but Ant hit the nail on the head exactly with his present, Graeme Gibson's 'The Bedside Book Of Birds', which is the most beautiful anthology of poems, stories and illustrations pertaining to the amazing little animals. That may sound boring to some, but it's not, so anyone with an interest should scurry to the bookshop in search of a copy immediately. Elsewhere, I got a host of amazing pressies, including wonderful books from AS, Vic and Andrew and a CD from Dan which I've been listening to all evening; 'Nigeria Rock Special', which is a bewildering and brilliant compilation of psychedelic afro-rock and jazz-funk from 1970s Nigeria. Ace.

- At the end of the night we raided the late-night shops for cheap beer and repaired to Dan's; from which point on I only remember so much - fetching Ant a glass of water when he'd drunk too much, Ant throwing a tube of pringles at me, dancing to Blur with Ant in Dan's room. And lots of other cool things which didn't involve being drunk with Ant.

- And now we discover the strobe lights. Dan bought them for a party, so we position one at either end of the room, turn the effect to slow and switch off the lights. What remains is just a series of stills; four or five of us throwing a ball around and watching it shudder across the room, one moment visible and the next obscured. Perhaps three times out of ten someone will catch it. We holler and whoop and laugh, and miss again. I don't mind getting older one bit.