Happy Birthday What's Your Name!

Saturday 25 June 2005, 8:16am

Dear all

Thank you for those of you who remembered my birthday. I am shocked and appalled by how many people forgot. Of my friends, only the ones in Australia remembered (you know who you are)...the India Travel Forum website even remembered. I found a very touching electronically produced e-card from them in my junk mail (I was searching for everyone else’s e-mails...I thought maybe they'd gone astray. They had not, you shower of bastards).

Yesterday ranked very low on the birthday top 19. I would say it was better than 16 17 and 18 but only because i didn't have an exam (GCSE, AS and A2 respectively), and definitely better than my 7th when I shat my pants on the bouncy castle, but it still ranks low. I did manage to maintain a decent level of drunkenness from about four o'clock onwards, which was ok, but it wasn't unfortunately the usual type of birthday drunkenness where you're surrounded by friends and having a really good time. Instead it was the old “I’m in India, with someone I don't really like, drunkenly plotting to smother him in his sleep, and a lot of my friends obviously don't have a clue when my birthday is". I’m sure you've all had that exact drunkenness at one time or another. However it did make me feel better when I woke up this morning to find Henman had been knocked out of Wimbledon by a piece of soiled toilet paper that’d been blown onto the court...best birthday present a boy could hope for. He really is a massive dripping cunt, and I don’t like to write that word down if I can avoid it, so let it be noted how strongly I dislike the guy. Also I found some other e-mails (mainly from family) and that card you sent me Nathan. Thank you all. It wasn’t too low on the birthday charts because it was spent in India. I think that may have dragged it into the top 7 or 8 (which isn't that high, considering I can't remember any before my 6th).

In other news, we went to the Taj Mahal on Thursday which was definitely the best thing I’ve seen ever anywhere (apart from the time I used a mirror to watch myself poohing), never mind in India. It’s really one of those things that you can only ever appreciate once you've seen it firsthand, up close and personal (in that way it’s pretty similar to squatting above a mirror and watching yourself pooh actually). Staring up at the huge white dome, surrounded by screaming Indian children and Indian adults who want a picture of you (yes, that's right, even at the Taj Mahal they were still some more interested in the white men than the incredible building behind them, which made me start to think I might just be a grotesque freak and I’d just never realised it). We took Bens FHM and took some pictures of us reading it which we're going to send in when we get back (well he is). We also did a few Princes Di shots, although i don't think it was the right bench that we were sitting on looking forlorn. I think I had flu or something, so apart from that; I spent the day on pain killers, feeling a bit crappy.

Oh and I bought a 3/4 size sitar, and played a full size professional standard one. Which was very cool. I am the hippy god of luuuuurve mothafuckaz!

hope you're all well. see you next week those of you who are in the uk.