One year older

And so today I turn twenty-five, clocking up a quarter of a century. Having a birthday in mid August has often felt anti-climactic due to everyone being all over the place. Often I've been away from home - spending birthdays in places such as Kenya, Tunisia, Yugoslavia (as it was - now Croatia), Austria, the Netherlands, Shropshire, Westmorland or right now Lanarkshire - and this can often split up celebrations even further.

August is also a rather dull time for anything happening in the wider world - once for a study task I looked up the newspapers from the week when I was born to find out the major news stories of the time. It was the battle between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic Party nomination for the US Presidency. This is hardly exciting stuff at the best of times! The Sun this week has it even worse - a front cover devoted to astronomers discovered a bunch of stars that can have lines drawn between them to look like Victor Meldrew! BBC News's "On This Day" feature for August 11th usually highlights Edward Heath's greatest achievement as Prime Minister - leading the country to victory in the 1971 Admiral's Cup - and the Kray brothers being allowed to go to their mother's funeral. The other big story is the eclipse of the Sun in 1999 - but in the broad scheme of things this is not particularly distinct on an international scale. And a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for today shows a good number of people were born on this day but the only names I recognise are Jerry Falwell (the US televangelist), Pervez Musharraf (President of Pakistan), Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine in most Star Wars movies), Hulk Hogan (the wrestler), Sylvia Hermon (Ulster Unionist MP for North Down) and Jim Lee (the comic book artist).

To some twenty-five may not seem much at all. To others it seems like a great age! Personally I feel it's just another milestone on life. The past quarter of a century has had its ups and downs but it has in general been fun. And the future, well who knows? But it will be interesting finding out!