I was born on January 30th 1976. This is how the
Southend and District News Observer chose to celebrate the auspicious occasion – with ads
for exhaust pipes, a “slimming programme that really works” and ...erm....a luxury
sauna and massage club. Which is almost certainly NOT a brothel. Probably. If you read the ad closely, you will be delighted to hear that "Penthouse" boasted such facilities as a "colour TV".
Sadly, my parents did not save copies of any national
newspapers from the day of my birth – just this local classified section.
However, extensive research (by which I mean a couple of minutes on Google)
shows that the only event of global significance occurring on my date of birth
was the appointment of
George H W Bush as the 11th director of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Working on the Dalai Lama principle for that date, I could have been
the reincarnation of EITHER Texan blues musician Mance Lipscomb or Percy
Tyson "Plum" Lewis, a South African cricketer, both of whom died on the day I was born - my arrival on this plane thereby providing a suitable vessel for their immortal souls. Whether this would have been a karmic promotion or relegation for either of them, it's hard to say.
However, when Tibetan monks presented my infant self with items
that had belonged to Messrs Lipscomb and Lewis I failed to recognise them, causing
me to be disqualified from the succession. One of my earliest memories is the
monks’ heartfelt frustration over the wasted journey they had undertaken from
Lhasa to Essex.
Speaking of lamas - this works better if you read it out
loud, of course - here is a picture of me and my brother (far left) being
conveyed around London Zoo by one of the popular South American camelids in
1981 or 1982 #nofilter #swag #llama
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