MikePadgett.com

I am 27 today

— Birthdays are a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how much more you have yet to achieve in life.”

I am 27. At a point halfway through my “late twenties”.

I don’t feel any older today. J says that twenty seven is neither here nor there. Indeed twenty eight sounds better, she says, more significant.

Haruki Murakami, occupier of top spot in my unofficial list of favourite writers for something like seven years now, has one character say:

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

Maybe he’s right. I’m not, er, sure.

Matt said in 2004 that at 27 years old, he had only visited 9% of the world. It didn’t look like a lot to me. And I’ve been around a bit. So I tried this out for myself.

Michael Padgett, you’re late! Where have you been?

8% of the world it turns out. Not worldly-wise enough yet, then. Unlike John F Kennedy, who on this day in 1963 made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

The ‘F’ in John F Kennedy stands for ‘Fitzgerald’, as in F Scott. The ‘F’ in F Scott is Francis, whilst Fitzgerald hides his other middle name ‘Key’. A Dallas Key is a kind of fob that checkout operators in shops use to log on to their tills, whilst one key attraction in Dallas is Dealey Plaza, near Key Street. Here, Kennedy was shot five months after declaring himself a man of Berlin, the site of the famous Berlin Airlift, one of the first diplomatic face-offs in the Cold War, which occurred in 1948. On June 26th.

I share my birthday with actors Jason Schwartzmann (1980) and Chris O’Donnell (1970), director PT Anderson (1970), writer Pearl S Buck (1892), Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker (1909), the tropicalist musician and Brazilian Culture Minister Gilberto Gil (1942) and the UN (1945) whilst Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate, explorer Pizarro, architect Rietveld, philosopher Foucault and Richard Whiteley died today in history.