Does 26 still qualify as mid-twenties?

Ah. The Irish Birthday.

Probably similar to a birthday everywhere, in that the greatest gift you could receive from your nearest and beerest is alcoholic attention. You want people to remember your clock turning another one over, and you want them to set aside whole weekends to tell you how much fun you are and how badly they want to be passed out, in solidarity, on your kitchen floor at six on a Sunday morning. Yet... it's a little desperate to invite people out for your own birthday drinks, isn't it? A bit clingy? An admission that you're not all that popular after all?

Of course, when one lives 100 miles from home, all said friends are let off the hook and don't have to accompany anyone on a liver-bending stumble down the Lane Of Inebriation (And I suppose it's just as well. I recently forgot my mate Nelly's birthday and have barely been able to live with the shame since, partly because she's so intent to make the shame that bloody prickly. I'm sorry I forgot your birthday, Nellster. I'm sorry I didn't do the grand old night out with you).

It's strangely liberating. Instead of spending the day glued to my mobile, wondering where my congratulatory texts and offers of soaky sessions are, I shall instead spend today doing things that won't attack my self-confidence - listening to Queens Of The Stone Age and drinking espresso.

Oh, and NOT writing anything close to a decent blog post. I still love you, like. Just not as much as QOTSA and coffee, that's all.

Incidentally, who was the most important person that ever forgot your birthday? My mother forgot mine a couple of years ago. I went over to her house, goosebumply with anticipation and expecting cake and scratch cards, to find she'd gone out to dinner. The wench.