It was my birthday yesterday. I feel this is something you ought to know. This summer, the kids asked me what were the most important dates in history. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that Charles’ birthday was right up there hovering round the number one slot. They seemed to think I was joking.

 Truth be told, I don’t really go in for birthdays. All that compulsory jollity and how-does-it-feel? Feels just like yesterday except with a few extra damn fool question thrown into the mix. Bah! Humbug.

 As it happens, this week’s birthday did coincide with an important date. Barack Obama was re-elected. In politics, that’s about as good as it gets.

 And I got an email. Got several, in fact, but there was one pleased me in particular.

 A few years ago, in a largely futile attempt to show willing when confronted with agents and publishers, I signed up for the weekly newsletter of a 'book marketing guru'. He keeps trying to sell me webinars and telling me how I can flog a million copies of my Auntie’s shopping list if I only pay for one of his courses. From what I can gather, his system sounds very effective if your books fit a niche market like ‘gardening’ or ‘pets’ or ‘how to sell a million copies of your Auntie’s shopping list’, but experience suggests my novels are so very niche that I’ve yet to locate the corner they fit in.

 But the last newsletter justified wading through all the hype and breathless positive thinking. The guru always cites 'International Days' as promotional opportunities. Transpires that my birthday coincides with Boob Tube Day, Oral Herpes Day, Marooned Without a Compass Day, Marching Band Day, The Universe in a Nutshell Day, I Love Nachos Day, and Ultimate Frisbee Intercollegiate Day.

 Birthdays will never be quite the same again. Hereon in, come the 6th of November I will forever picture scantily dressed young women prone to STDs prancing about to a disoriented Oom-pah band spouting trite philosophy at one another, stuffing themselves with Tex-Mex snacks, stamping their feet, slapping their thighs, and flinging Frisbees back and forth while ageing and increasingly bewildered authors ogle their blouse brothers.

 I probably shouldn’t upload this posting. Already, for some inexplicable reason best known to themselves, Facebook are targeting me with adverts offering to introduce me to mature single women in my area and retrain me to become a Social Worker in South Dakota. What the previous paragraph will elicit, I hate to think.

 Anyway, come next November, spare a thought for me and the gallimaufry of images by which I will be assailed. And don’t, whatever you do, ask me how it feels.