On the Later Birthdays, October 2026

Birthday Cameras

There comes a point in every man's life, usually around the moment he finds himself setting aside the early Morphine albums, when he realises he has become older, and, rather to his surprise, that he doesn't mind in the least. Being older, I've discovered, is mostly a matter of no longer caring about things that once kept me awake at night: whether work or people being able to tell I've started reading the instructions before assembling things (they can, and they are impressed), whether I should stay out past eleven (I should not), and whether it is acceptable to have a strong opinion about the correct way to load a dishwasher (it is not only acceptable but, I would argue, a civic duty). The great secret of age, which nobody tells you when you are twenty-three and convinced you will die of embarrassment at any party, is that the embarrassment simply drains away, like bathwater, leaving behind a pleasant, slightly wrinkled contentment and an unexpected fondness for a good biscuit.

It is my birthday, and it falls, as it always has, on the day before Halloween, which is a bit like being born on Christmas Eve, only with more pumpkins and fewer presents. For years I regarded this as a design flaw. Nobody wants a birthday cake when they could have a bucketful of fun-size Mars bars, and there is something faintly undermining about blowing out your candles while the house across the street is festooned with plastic skeletons and a cardboard witch who appears to be leering directly at you. But I have come round to it. There is a certain dignity in being the warm-up act for the night of the dead, rather like being asked to open for the Rolling Stones, except that the Stones are seven-year-olds dressed as vampires and the venue is your own front step, and they want sweets rather than applause. Ok maybe that went too far……..

But best of all, I have bought myself a present: a Canon AE-1 Program, a camera first released in 1981, which makes it, by the standards of modern electronics, roughly as old as Stonehenge but, hopefully, more reliable. I will spend the morning in that peculiar state of suspended animation known only to people awaiting a parcel, unable to settle to anything, leaping up at every passing van, and peering through the curtains like a Victorian widow watching for a ship. Delivery firms, I've noticed, have perfected the art of the vague promise: "between 7am and 9pm" is not a time slot so much as an indeterminate quantum state. Still, somewhere out there on the roads of London, a man in a hi-vi vest is carrying a small cardboard box containing a heavy, beautiful, black-and-chrome machine that goes ker-chunk when you press the shutter, and when he finally knocks on my door I intend to greet him with an enthusiasm that will alarm us both. Happy birthday to me.