What To Do For The Big Zero

I’m not old. It is a pure and simple fact, I am just not old. I do not feel old, my body is still holding up well, both of my parents are still alive and kicking and I don’t have any Grandchildren yet.

To judge me by any standard other than my biological age, I would not be old. Instead, the good old body clock is showing that I’m coming up to a nice round number. My twenties were a long time ago and I am right on the cusp of leaving my thirties. The annoying truth is all too annoying.

I am about to hit the big zero and it’s going to have a four in front of it.

It’s now that I have two choices, do I embrace the whole turning forty thing and have a massive party. Or do I attempt the complete opposite and hide from the world for a day and just hope that no-one notices?

There’s a lot of merit in the second option, but everyone I know, somehow knows that it’s my fortieth coming up and it’s literally mentioned every time I see any of them.

If there’s no avoiding the issue, my best bet is to go big. To throw one huge party and to have the time of my life, whilst pretending that it is still only my twenty-first birthday and that is exactly what I did.

When I started to think about a huge blow out party, there was only really one thought. A pool party. I could see it immediately, all of my glamorous friends gathered around the edge of my pool, drinking champagne in the height of summer. It was a scene straight out of Beverley Hill 90210 from my childhood. Then I remembered that I don’t have a pool, none of my friends have a Hollywood body and my birthday is in March. So I probably wasn’t going to be throwing a pool party any time soon.

The next obvious thought was to have a James Bond casino evening. A tuxedo and ball gown affair. Everyone looks great in evening wear, it’s a sure fire winner. I could hire the local village hall and with a whole day of setting up, I could create a master piece.

It was going to be brilliant. I immediately found a company online who would all me to rent out a couple of Roulette tables, some poker tables and the all important croupiers to staff the tables, shuffle the cards and take my friend’s money.

That was the hard part and I’d paid the deposit, so it was definitely going ahead. The next issue involved a short walk down to the local pub and a word with my friend the barman. A few beers later and we had a great deal. If he stocked and staffed the bar, he could keep all the money he made from the very generously priced drinks. I wasn’t looking to make any money from my party and his solution was the one which involved the least amount of effort from me. So I snatched his hand off.

The village hall would never be an issue, I’d used it hundreds of times before for various functions. Within minutes, it was booked online and then I just had to worry about decorating it.

The walls were huge and empty, but I had a plan. I knew that not many people would be professional card players and very few would really know what they were doing. So I found some interesting and informative poker charts which told me all I needed to know about poker and how I could win. I sent these to a printer and had them produce huge poster versions of the charts. Twenty of these charts easily covered the walls behind the tables and would prove to be very useful when my friends had started to drink a bit too much later into the night.

The last and possibly best touch I thought about was to hire a professional photographer to be at my birthday. I didn’t want any big staged photos. I wasn’t after a wedding collection or a huge group photo. What I did was to tell them to walk around and just take photos of my friends enjoying themselves. If the photographer found it interesting, then I knew I would too. I even told him to just have fun and join in.

Some of those photos are unbelievably great representations of the fun we had that night.

When I looked through them, it just reinforced the fact that I should have had a huge party. I had a ball, even though everybody knew I was turning forty, it wasn’t a fortieth party. It was just a great night out for everyone I knew.