Forty

In a few hours the leftmost number on my tachometer will roll over. Like a car coming up to the 100,000 mile mark, a major milestone will pass. I will be forty.

As the significant digit rolls over, I find myself in Barcelona all set to attend TechEd 2008 - otherwise known as Geek Week. Four and a half days in the company of geeks from all over Europe, the Middle East and Asia, paying guests of Microsoft.

The day began after a luxurious (and all too rare these days) repose of nearly ten hours of immobile sleep; following, as it did, an eventful three days. When the leftmost digit began to roll over, as it always does just before the event itself, it was marked by a sequence of events out of the ordinary.

It began on Thursday evening when a good, and recently discovered, friend decided I needed reminding of how to relax and let go. She was right of course, and I'm slowly learning to accept the wisdom of others.

She decided to treat me, by way of my impending fortieth, to a brilliant evening spent at a small comedy venue in London called The Spectator, which has the dubious claim to fame of being located at one end of a street called Little Britain. The pub itself is fairly uninteresting, consisting of a shrink-wrap bar upstairs and a small downstairs room in the corner of which was, hastily constructed, a stage big enough for two men to stand on at the same time provided they were prepared to invade each others personal space.

The compere and three comedians busked their way through very funny repertoires whilst we worked our way through some alcohol and a plate full of the smashed ends of a packet of nachos disguised with a few slices of chillis, lots of cheese and guacamole. Even the young man sat behind us who was far to clever in his own mind to care about whether anyone else found his heckling funny failed to spoil the proceedings.

I'd only managed about three hours sleep the night before, but the fun of the evening kept me going, and it was only when I got home about 1.30am that I suddenly felt very tired. I must have fallen asleep immediately because when the alarm went off at 5.30am the light was still on. My younger son decided to join me in my bed for twenty minutes where I was able yet again to marvel at the peaceful, calming effect of a four year old child nuzzling up to his dad. There is so little peace in my life that those rare moments become all the more memorable.

When I felt strong enough to face it I jumped in the shower and set about gearing up for a big day. The office beckoned with a nine o'clock meeting with my boss, my comedy companion from the night before and her boss, as we discussed enterprise architecture.

The day went by very quickly until entirely at random and in recognition that I would not be in the office next week, mid-afternoon I decided to invite my team for a quick beer after work to celebrate my upcoming milestone/millstone. I managed to sneak in a career changing meeting toward days end before catching up (somewhat later than advertised) with my team in a local pub.

For the second evening on the trot I was reminded of the power of good company as food for the soul. Much beer was consumed as undercurrent to a series of remarkable events. One of my team was marking the beginning of the rest of her life, and perhaps the end of the worst three years of her life past during which she lost both her parents.

She will soon be a mum for the first time. I can only imagine the mixed emotions she will feel as she becomes a proud mother in a few short weeks, and at the same time reflects on her newborn's lack of grandparents on her side of the family. Too recently departed, her parents must surely be sorely missed at this great event in her life. My heart goes out to her.

I seem to recall randomly breaking into a game of charades in the pub when, for some reason, I needed to mime "The curse of the ware-rabbit". Several rounds of the game followed, with all participating (with varying degrees of coercion) in the silliness.

The evening ended with another late night, the repercussions of which can only begin to be guessed at. A truly freaky place to be.

I arrived home early yesterday morning after a second night of only a few hours sleep. I was the best part of useless yesterday, spending the entire day catching myself nodding off as exhaustion knocked purposefully at the door.

I survived until the early evening, and after fish and chips, and the packing of my bag ready for tomorrow, I was led downstairs by my elder son with my eyes shut to a chorus of "happy birthday". When I opened my eyes my four-year old was holding a birthday cake for me. I blew the candles out, then set about opening my one large present. It was all my elder could do to stop himself shouting out what was under the giftwrap. He managed to contain himself until my gift was revealed.

A few weeks ago, I had mentioned I might take up the guitar. I consider this to be one of the things on my midlife crisis list, along with buying a motorbike, and taking singing lessons. The guitar idea was planted in my head when the fifth member of our boat crew (April 2009) let on that he can play a bit, and that he would bring his acoustic guitar with him. I was immediatly struck by the idea of strumming chords as the water slipped peacefully under the boat.

My gift was a black statocaster style electric guitar complete with amplifier. I am over the moon, and at the same time bemused by a card from my wife that she has signed "love M********" - this after her telling me a few weeks ago that she wants a divorce.

Anyway, back to last night, and having realised the guitar needed some serious tuning, the children, surly wife and I set off to the village fireworks display. We bumped into some friends who are all aware of our estranged family arrangements, and everyone pretended that all was normal, for the benefit of the boys, I guess. The fireworks served to please the boys, and I was awake and alert once more.

We all stood in a very muddy field in the rain, and pondered the possibility of going to the pub for a pint. My wife declared that she was going to be a "lightweight", skip the pub and go home. A few minutes later, the boys began to show their tiredness, and I suggested to her that we should take them home. In doing so, I mentioned to our friends that I would probably come up the pub after I had seen the boys safely to bed. My wife then adopted a pissed off tone and said to anyone who would listen "never mind that I might want a drink" before turning tail and dragging my younger son along with her. I said my goodbyes to our friends and followed with elder, completely confused at how two minutes earlier she was going to be a lightwieight, but was now miffed when I suggested I might go back out.

As it happened, by the time we had walked home and discovered under the light from the garage how muddy our boys had managed to get themselves, I was only fit for getting them stripped and showered before exhaustion finally made it through the door and hit me again. With the boys in bed, I decided to give in to what turned out to be ten hours of deep sleep.

And so to this morning. I began by packing bags ready for a day of travelling. Once I was showered, I set about finding out whether I have a good enough ear to tune a guitar. In this respect the internet, in the form of the website howtotuneaguitar.com, offered considerably more hope than the tuning pipes that came with the gift.

Having brought the lower E somewhere close to the tone offered by the website, I realised that tuning the other strings using the same tone generator would not help me unless I have perfect pitch, which with my singing voice is highly unlikely.

It turns out that tuning a guitar is surprisingly easy - in theory at least. The important thing is to have the guitar in tune with itself, so long as the lower E is there or there abouts, each of the other strings should be tuned to this string. So armed with the knowledge that pressing the already tuned string at the fifth fret gives the note for the next string (with the exception of the B string, which needs the fourth fret) I discovered I was able to tune the guitar.

I was particularly smug to note I am able to play the fretted string and the open string together and listen carefully for any slight difference in the wave-length. The rate at which the strings "pulse" with each other gives a clue as to whether one needs to tune slightly up or down to achieve the desired result.

I managed to get the first three strings tuned before I had to leave to catch my flight. In that short time, I've already understood that I am going to be developing callouses on the very tips of the fingers of my left hand. Holding a string down on the fretboard for any length of time becomes very painful. As I type nearly twelve hours later I can still feel the now tender results of holding down the strings.

It's obvious it's going to hurt for a while until my fingers toughen up. Mind you, hearing the sweet sound of three strings in harmony with each other is delicious, and worth the sore fingers. I can't wait to get the other strings in tune and listen to the promise of a future waiting to be discovered as all six strings work together without dissonance.

The flight was uneventful and I arrived at my hotel in Barcelona about five o'clock. Having taken the half mile stroll up to the exhibition centre to register, I refamiliarised myself with the immediate surroundings. Last year I was in a pokey hotel in the old town, where nighttime brought with it a hint of danger. This year, the seventh floor seaview from my hotel room promises an entirely difference experience.

I found a nice resturant offering me a plate of seafood, and tucked into a flavoursome arrangement of cockles, mussels, squid, and king-prawns, all of which was very garlicky (I'm on my own, so who cares?)

I wandered back to the hotel to dump the bag of freebies given to me when I registered, and set off with book in hand in search of a quiet bar. I'm reading "Guitar Man", which is the cronicle of a 34 year old man who, much like myself, decided he'd had enough of wishing he could play, and instead set about doing it.

His trials and tribulations have given me all I need to realise I'll succeed at playing because I've already given up all pretence of copying famous guitar heroes. I have only the small expectation of being able to keep time as I strum my way through "Three Blind Mice". If I can accompany my boys as they sing nursery rhymes, then I will be a contented man.

And so, as the tachometer shows 99999.9, to sleep. The actual day of my fortieth will be uneventful I'm sure, but with the three days I've had, that's almost certainly a good thing.