I remember always always I got such a fright, seeing them in my dark cupboard with my great big cake

So, yesterday was my birthday. I now have as many years as Heinz have varieties but at my age you stop counting anyway.

I received presents, cards and texts from friends and family but this year I also received my first Happy Birthday Grandad card which was a bit special. Over the years I have been given some excellent Birthday presents including Ayr United Season Tickets from my Mum and Dad when I was young, a trip to the World Cup in Italy from my then wife in 1990 and a watch from my three sons for my 50th which up until yesterday had been my favourite present. However that has now been usurped by the Grandad mug, Grandad fridge magnet and Grandad badges received yesterday from Young Ben. I even wore one of the badges to bed last night which was somewhat painful as I was not wearing any pyjama top, so I felt a bit like Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse

I thought back to some of the birthdays I have had in the past and sporadic memories came flooding back

I remember when.......

I was five and you were six, we rode on horses made of sticks
You wore black and I wore white, you would always win the fight

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man

Fifteen summers and you're trying to tell me just how lonely this world can be

Me and you, we've known each other ever since we were sixteen

She was thirty-one and I was seventeen
I knew nothing about love, she knew everything

We'd hide from the lights on the village green, when I was seventeen

Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat

It came undone, when I was twenty-one

And that's about the time she walked away from me
Nobody likes you when you're twenty-three

I'm twenty-three now but will I live to see twenty-four
The way things are goin' I don't know

Well Billy rapped all night about his suicide
How he kick it in the head when he was twenty-five
Speed jive don't want to stay alive
When you're twenty-five

We'd ride in limousines, their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five

At the age of thirty-seven, I realised I'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair

Bells are chiming and tears are falling
It creeps up on you without a warning, forty-five

Sometimes I think about the days back then
But there’s no return in the way-back-when
I loved them all but those days are gone
I turned fifty
So, come on, world, bring it on!

But now the days grow short
I’m in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
from fine old kegs
from the brim to the dregs
And it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year

It was a mess of good years