It's my party and I'll have a nice time because you say so

It was my 26th birthday last week. Hurray for me. I was at work as per normal and yet plagued by family and friends asking me if I had a ‘nice day’ which, I’ve realised, is the social convention for birthday greetings – i.e. ‘Happy Birthday Alice, did you have a nice day?’ Did I have a ‘nice day’? Well, my flatmate made me breakfast, I had an average day at work followed by my usual Wednesday night routine of drinks in my local. I supposed it would’ve been a nice day bar two features peculiar to birthdays which almost invariably ruin birthdays.

First is that post-21 all birthdays simply reinforce that in society’s eyes you are on the inevitable march towards death and being reminded of this all day long can often turn an otherwise ‘nice day’ sour. This may sound melodramatic, but it is true. When you are under 21 you have ‘big birthdays’ to look forward to which make you cooler – 10 (double figures), 13 (a teenager), 16 (legal sex), 18 (legal alcohol, can be an MP), 21 (the pinnacle) – but after that nothing but jokes about middle-age, getting old, being over-the-hill, pensions, zimmer-frames, and death. Check out the greetings card section in your local gift shop if you don’t believe me. Society simply does not value age. It values youth. And so for the last week I’ve had to endure jokes about how old I am and reminders of all the things I haven’t yet achieved despite being so old (marriage, children, a mortgage). And to top it all off I went away at the weekend on the train and couldn’t use my young person’s railcard because I am officially no longer young as the X Factor reminds me weekly with it’s ‘older people’ category of over 25s.

The second birthday-ruining feature is the pressure to be having a ‘nice day’ because it just so happens that 26 years ago you were being born. Incidentally I’d like to point out here that I’m not sure I was having a particularly ‘nice time’ as I was squeezed out into the world. I can’t say that for sure, but I wouldn’t want to have to do it again. Anyway this pressure is two-fold: firstly that you must ‘do something’ to celebrate and secondly that you must enjoy the thing that you do.

So, feeling the typical pressure whenever friends remembered I was the next birthday and asked me what I was doing I organised a small get together in London the following day after work for colleagues and friends. I normally like drinking in quirky pubs in East London, but time spent worrying about whether my guests were having a good time whilst at the same time worrying about whether I was having the obligatory ‘nice time’ due to constant asking of that question sucked dry any enjoyment the evening might otherwise have held. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” is a lie – once during the evening I tried answering the ‘are you having a nice day’ questions with ‘not really’ and the whole conversation got very awkward and I had to do lots of back-tracking and qualifying to get it back on track. I do admit that I might suffer from a more heightened form of this problem due to my recently diagnosed Peep-Show-itis*, but I still think that unless you’re blind drunk at a party you’ve organised (which I’m not into) then it’s very difficult to actually enjoy it and this is even more true on your birthday when you’re supposed to be having such a nice time.

Until we start valuing those who are older than us rather than rubbishing them and until we stop caving to the pressure that we must do something to celebrate our birthdays (but only a pre-defined set of things – try telling your friends that you’re staying in to watch Friends repeats on E4 and you will be met with eye-rolling or sympathetic nods depending on the type of friend) then I will continue to slightly dread October 7 each year.

*Peep-Show-itis is a condition whereby I have taken to analysing what the show would be like if it was based around my life and coming to the worrying conclusion that in many respects it would be the same. This is, probably, why I think it’s one of the best shows on TV, but also why it has kind of ruined my life. Thanks boys.