Turning Thirty Read Online Free PDF Page A

the middle-aged woman sitting in the seat next to me was no longer concentrating on the comment page of the New York Post but instead was straining with every fibre to listen to our conversation. ‘Crippled bumble bees, to be exact.’
    â€˜Bees?’ queried Elaine.
    â€˜Yeah, big fat furry ones.’ I sighed, turned to New York Post Woman and stared at her until she got the message. ‘When I was a kid I used to get upset if I ever came across a dying bumble bee in the garden. The logic of my five-year-old brain ran something like this: It’s wrong that something so cute and furry, something that makes honey and generally helps out in the garden, should have to come to an end. So whenever I saw a dying bee I’d try to make it better. I’d place it on the edge of a saucer with some sugary water and encourage it to drink in the hope that it would get better.’
    â€˜Did they live?’
    â€˜No. They always—’ I stopped mid-sentence. New York Post Woman was back again. I stared at her once more and this time she lifted her newspaper right up. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ I continued, ‘is that I suppose you and me – us – well, our relationship was a crippled bumble bee. And I suppose I was hoping that maybe we’d get better. But when you called it a day I knew it was over. But no matter how inevitable something is it’s still a shock when it happens.’ I looked over at Elaine, who had tears in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
    â€˜Bees,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s got to be the dumbest analogy I’ve ever heard.’

six
    By the time I was ready to move out three months had gone by since Elaine and I had decided to split. Just before Christmas I’d had another meeting with my boss. I’d been all geared up to tell him that I’d made up my mind and that I wanted to be transferred back to London when he made me an offer I found impossible to refuse. The company was planning to open a new office in Sydney, Australia and they wanted to promote me to design consultant to oversee the setting up of the software team. The contract would be for six months to a year initially, and the money would double overnight. It was my dream thirtysomething job, with dream thirtysomething money to match.
    Perfect. Well, nearly. The only problem was that they wouldn’t be starting the project for two months and wouldn’t require my assistance for another month after that. In short, I’d spend three months in transfer limbo. The initial suggestion was that I stay in New York, but I told him that was out of the question and suggested I went to the London office for a while. However, it seemed that finding me work there for just three months would cause more problems than it solved. Finally, at the end of what turned out to be a three-hour meeting, I came up with a solution: that I take the three months off as an unpaid sabbatical. And they agreed.
    After eight years of working I wanted a rest. I needed a rest. Unlike most of my mates at university I hadn’t taken a year off before or after my degree, and since I’d got a job straight from university I’d never had much of a holiday either. I had enough money stashed in savings accounts to last twice the amount of time on offer so there was nothing to stop me.
    â€˜What will you do with yourself?’ asked my boss, as if reading my mind. ‘Go lie on a beach? Travel?’
    â€˜No,’ I replied, with such conviction that it shocked me. ‘I’m going to go home. I’m going home to Birmingham – see my parents, catch up with old friends and celebrate my thirtieth birthday.’

    There were, of course, a lot of reasons why my good idea was actually a very bad one and all of them involved my parents. The top three:

    1) The knowledge that, without a doubt, my parents would drive me insane if I spent any longer than twenty-four