Three decades old

Well, I'm old. Three decades old.

There are ups and downs. Hair continues to migrate from my head to my nostrils and ears, the perilous journey through my skull fretting them into greyness. My belly, once chiselled and god like, is now pliant and monk-like. Colds that once lasted a day decide they like their new home, and stay for a long weekend. Admittedly I am more mature and wise, and anyone who disagrees is a wee-wee head, but this is of small benefit when a hangover that in my teens would not even have registered can now make my brain seep out of my nose and my stomach pour out of my arse like acid cleaner down a drain.

So in a purely self indulgent post I decided to look back at a few of the highlights of my twenties. A fun game is to guess how many IQ points I lost per event. I'll start with two tonight, with a few more tomorrow.

1) Time to go back to when I was 20. 1999. Man Utd were bathing in the triumph of Barcelona. Britney was still fit. I had a fashionable "bowl-cut" hairstyle and massive glasses, and was fending off women left right and centre with an erotic blend of constant sarcasm and curry for Breakfast.

On the night in question I was blotto. Drunk. Wrecked. It was a fairly lovely feeling as I was dressed in a tuxedo so I was still the man. We had been at my University sports federation ball, when I suddenly decided to walk home to Coventry. Normally this would take about 25 mins.

I left without telling anyone, smoothly slipping out of the marquee by literally wrestling with a sheet of plastic cover for about two minutes before a steward came to untangle me.

Then I walked out into the bleak night fully loaded on cigars, cheap red wine and hope. The wine lasted, the hope didn't. Within an hour I found myself lying in the middle of an unknown roundabout with an unknown man standing over me. Luckliy my trousers still seemed to be in place. He said, in a monumentally obvious tone: "You don't want to be sleeping here mate." I was lying in a bush, on the outskirts of Coventry, in a tuxedo, in the freezing cold. Thank you for that sage advice. I told him my road name. He said go to the end of this road, then go right, then the end of the next road, right, end of next road, right, then you'll be there. I followed this samaritan's advice to the letter, aprat from the last bit when I completely ignored him.

The journey lasted about 4 hours. I carried a hubcap for one of them.

I heard dogs barking. At one point I climbed over a barbed wired fence. I lay under a tree. I walked through some school grounds. I ran, crawled, stumbled, shuffled. I spoke to a man carrying a rucksack. I sat on a wall and counted out about 14 pence from my pockets, socks and underpants. I don't know what order I did these things in but I know I did them. Anyone following me would have thought I had real problems - I was walking through the city shouting "Where the F*** am I" at the top of my voice. And then I got home.

I woke up the next morning with sore legs, not really understanding the odyssey I had taken. At the time I was furious - the next day it was hilarious. It still stands as one of the funniest thing ever in my life, and yet I'm not really sure why - it has never been repeated, and never can be.

Number two tomorrow - a trip to Scandinavia - along with other bits and bobs