Anyway, I hated all the bother surrounding my birthday and felt embarrassed. I quickly said ‘cheers’ and took the cake home. My mam then explained to me that I should have cut the cake there and then and shared it out, but staying in the kitchen handing out cake and talking to people I didn’t know was not for me. I think this is why Bob Geldof chucked food parcels out of planes in Africa – it was to avoid the small talk.
‘Why should they get my cake?’ I remember thinking. I wouldn’t mind if I knew all of them, but there were people there from different departments, who I’d never seen in my life, and yet they expected to have some of my cake. My mam made me take what was left into work the next day. After that experience, I always arranged to be away on holiday when it was my birthday. I also preferred to get fired from a job instead of leaving, as people don’t tend to get you a card and cake or make a fuss when you’ve been booted out.
In the end Suzanne agreed to make me a chilli and it was well nice, and I didn’t have to share it with any strangers.
Like I said, being forty doesn’t feel any different to being thirty. Even the aches and pains I have now have always been around. I’ve had backache since I was about ten, after I tried to kick my height and ended up landing on my arse. So now I get through as many heat patches in a week as I do teabags. I normally have two or three on at any one time to ease the pain. I give off that much heat I have old people shuffling behind me keeping warm in my jet stream.
For some reason a lot of people think you should be all settled by the time you get to forty and be married with kids, and if you’re not they find it odd. That’s what triggered the idea of the TV programme and this new book. Why do most people follow the same pattern in life, and is it the same the world over? The number of times I’ve been asked, ‘Why aren’t you and Suzanne married? Why no kids?’ I say, ‘Why does everyone feel that this is what you should do?’ They normally follow that up with ‘Well, why are we here?’ – a question I’ve never thought about apart from the time Suzanne took me on a ‘surprise’ holiday to Lanzarote.
IT DOESN’T BOTHER me when there are postal strikes, as most of what comes through our front door I’m not in a rush to receive. Gas bills, phone bills, council tax bills, and the thing that fills me with the most dread – wedding invitations. It’s like getting summoned for jury service.
You don’t want to go, but it’s very difficult to get out of, and then it’s a long, drawn-out affair that you have to sit through with strangers. You can normally tell it’s a wedding invite because the font on the envelope has so many swirls and curls it looks like your address was written out during an earthquake.
I’ll check who the invitation is from, and if it’s not a relation, I’ll try to get it to the shredder before Suzanne gets wind of it. Getting rid of the evidence isn’t so easy when the envelope is packed full of bits of glitter and gold hearts that go all over the bloody place when you open it, like a money bag from the bank that’s been fitted with an ink bomb.
Then I have to hoover up the evidence. I did this recently, but Suzanne knew what I’d done when she went to vacuum the stairs and saw the glitter whizzing round inside the Dyson like some kind of Brian Cox CGI universe.
I’m not totally against marriage. If two people want to get married, they should just get on with it. Why all the palaver? I think getting a joint mortgage is a bigger deal, yet you don’t have to invite everyone-you-know-plus-one to witness you signing the contract. I might have married Suzanne years ago if we could have done it online.
Just tick a few boxes, agree to the terms and conditions and wait for the automated reply that says it’s all gone through and we’re now husband and wife. Why has that not been set up? I don’t think having a big fancy wedding means you love someone more, it just means you want to show your friends and family how much you love someone.
But I’ve never been too bothered about what other people think. And there isn’t one bit of the traditional wedding that attracts me. I’m a big fan of cake, and yet even wedding cake doesn’t tempt me. I don’t know anyone who likes it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eating it either.
I’ve watched people scoffing down kangaroo arse and bulls’ bollocks on I’m a Celebrity, yet I’ve never witnessed wedding cake being eaten. In fact, wedding cakes sum up the whole thing for me – over the top, unnecessarily complicated, no one really enjoys it, and it’s sickly sweet.
THE WEDDING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
People think it’s odd that I hate weddings and don’t want to get married to Suzanne, even though we’ve been together so long. They think getting married and having kids is what life’s all about. I don’t agree, but I was travelling to the wedding capital of the world to see if I might change my mind.
Over 115,000 people travel to Las Vegas every year to tie the knot. My flight was full of single blokes going there to gamble and couples going to get married, which you could say is a different sort of gamble. The couple sitting in front of me were from Newcastle and they were with their friends and family. That’s something else that winds me up about weddings: when the happy couple say they’re gonna get married abroad and they seem to think it’s reasonable to ask you to take time off work, and pay for flights and a hotel just to see them say ‘I do’. Well, ‘I won’t’. The Geordies were drinking champagne, which is always dragged out at weddings too. I’ve never been a fan, as it gives me heartburn and I don’t like the way it doesn’t come with a proper lid. Once the cork is out it has to be drunk. Even Pringles supply you with a proper lid.
I went for the healthiest options on the flight to get some roughage in my system. On my last trip to America I travelled down Route 66 and I ended up feeling fat and bloated after just a few days, as I couldn’t find many places that served vegetables. The fact that they call fruit machines slot machines in the US just goes to show that fruit and veg aren’t that popular.
Twelve hours later (five bottles of champagne for the Geordie couple) we landed in Vegas, which is said to be the brightest place on Earth from space. We got to the hotel, and it was massive. There was a huge casino on the ground floor. I’ve heard that these places try all sorts of tricks to keep people gambling. They have no clocks or windows so you don’t know what time of day it is, and they pump the place with oxygen to keep everyone awake. At the hotel casino all the machines have comfy chairs in front of them to make people stay longer. I’m not sure how successful this is, though, as my dentist’s chair is pretty comfy but I don’t stay for extra fillings. As we were checking in I watched as old people sat there, feeding their life’s savings into the slots. Some of them looked like they could be in their 90s. The oxygen being pumped into the room was probably the only thing keeping them alive. Maybe they were trying to win enough to pay for a taxi back to their rooms, the place was that big. All the hotels are big here. They boast in Vegas about having seventeen of the world’s twenty largest. Even the bellboy who helped carry my luggage to the room seemed a bit lost. The distance he must cover in an evening, he’s more of a Sherpa than a bellboy.
After sending him on his way back out into the maze of corridors I made myself a cup of tea. On the tea tray there was a tin labelled ‘Intimacy Kit’, which contained a condom and some mints. Hardly a ‘kit’, is it? You get more in a Kinder egg. There was a note in the bathroom asking occupants to re-use towels to help the hotel be more environmentally friendly,