My 5th Crude birthday

Location In bed early on birthday night, ready for edit tomorrow | Mood Slightly less worried than I'm telling myself | Date 3 February 2007
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
In bed early on birthday night, ready for edit tomorrow
Mood: 
Slightly less worried than I'm telling myself
Soundtrack: 
Neighbours arguing through the walls
Date: 
3 February 2007
Current crisis: 
I am now middle aged
Current silver lining: 
I'm making a bloody brilliant film (someone asked the other day whether Crude was any good to which I replied that it's a work of unparalleled genius but that if I wasn't completely delusional I wouldn't keep going, so no point asking me for an objective view)

35 today. That's got to be middle aged. I always used to be the whippersnapper (aged 15 in a class full of drum students all 25+, aged 20 in a pop group with seven men all 30+, making McLibel on my own aged 23). Now suddenly I'm the old fart and there's people volunteering at Spanner who are HALF MY AGE. They talk about their modern music and their all night parties and I tune out just like the old granny should.

Went for birthday lunch with my very first funder, Peter B - a friend of my mum's who gave me 1000 pounds to make McLibel way back in the day and with which I pretty much made the whole first version of the film. After Peter had tried his best to fatten me up - looking alarmingly skinny after India and Nigeria, apparently - I wandered around the science museum drunkenly trying to find the exhibit of future computers to do a little research for our Hindsight machine, till someone told me it finished six weeks ago.

Lizzie's sister - or is she her clone? - Kat, the latest of Lizzie's relatives to be roped into helping Crude, is a bit of a theatre buff and had recommended a play, 'Happy Days', as "very funny". So went with Dad and Taz to what we thought was a comedy. Turned out to be a deep dark meditation on death, aging and the paralysis that comes with middle age. With a couple of funny lines. Perfect crisis birthday material.

This is my 5th Crude birthday. Surely the last one?