GROWN UP DAY

I was 46 today.  I don't feel or (think) I look older but as Tom was at school today I spent the day doing very grown up things, on what is really, if you think about it, a 'growing up' day.    I will share only some of what I did, one day I'll put it in a novel, but I certainly won't in a blog.

Last year I sky dived over the Oxfordshire countryside.  The guy I went up in the air with told me I wasn't the usual type who does it in their forties because of what he calls a 'midlife crisis urge'.    The type who needs to do everything at once because they realise they suddenly haven't done a lot with the first forty years of their life and now want to do things that had never occurred to them before.    Like sky diving over the Oxfordshire countryside.   It was a wonderful experience and I would do it over and over again.  Unlike bungee jumping and getting married which I would only do once.   This year I did the positively sedate past time of visiting galleries. I have tried to encourage Tom's love of art, but he's still at the stage where unless the artwork is particularly odd or disgusting he would rather be at the computer screen at home or kicking a football about.  I started at the Royal Academy which was interesting mainly because I didn't know Tracey Emin had the nerve to charge what she does for her paintings and people have the stupidity to pay for them.    They deserve each other.  But I bought a print of Quentin Blake because I love the Roald Dahl books and his drawings remind me of those dark and inspired stories.   Then I visited Tate Britain and stared hard at Henry Moore works, a fascinating artist, producing sexy and tortured sculptures and wonderful paintings.   I watched those who were wandering around these galleries.   By coincidence I had watched the film 'Dressed To Kill' the night before, that film with Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine.   There was a scene in an art gallery at the start but hard as  I looked I didn't see any frustrated glamorous housewives looking for a one night stand or cross dressing pyschopathic knife carrying killers.   Galleries aren't what they use to be...