...and I'll blog if I want to. Was there a better way to usher in the anniversary of my nativity than by sitting up until 3am, drinking red wine and reading poems? Possibly - Parisien boutique hotels near the Place des Vosges spring to mind - but it will do. Or maybe it proves that, agèd and increasingly decrepit though I am, with all those years crinkling into crow's feet around my eyes and an ever-broadening white streak in my hair, there is still part of me that remains stubbornly adolescent.

For all that, the fact is that my youth was not so much fun and I don't have any nostalgia for it. I like the age I am. It feels fine. The zeitgeist might be feeling the chilly winds of history, world financial markets might be reaping their sub-prime karma, the global powers might be sticking depleted uranium pins into each other's colonies, the coral reefs are bleaching and the Siberian permafrost is melting into mush, but hey, here I am, and life is now, and life is good.

I have a couple of blog posts to catch up on - a review and a long-intended list of links to an increasingly lively theatrical blogosphere. And the US proofs of The Singing are sitting fatly on my desk, with a deadline rapidly approaching. I'll get around to all that, once my hangover abates anyway, and then I'm taking a few days off and fleeing this fair city for warmer (or at least less meteorologically bipolar) climes. It's a deep breath before I stick my toes into the turbulent waters of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, which lurches into chaotic life this Friday. I've had my usual MFF panic attacks, but have calmed down. I'll see some things, and miss most others, and I'm counting on others to make up the slack.  In the meantime - prost!