September 11th, 1971 10.15am

Dear Readers,

Thirty Six years ago a small baby boy was lifted out of the womb of a sedated woman in Cambridge, England. That baby boy, weighing an ambitious nine pounds, was me, and the woman, unsurprisingly, was my mother. The doctor who performed this caesarian operation is unknown to me but evidence suggests he or she did a good job.

You will understand that though this event had no importance to the world in general, and had only limited significance to those with whom I would later interact, it was monumentally important for me - even more so, it might be argued, than it was for my mother. At the time of course, even though she was unconscious at the actual moment of delivery, the significance was only hers, since I was totally unaware of the event, just as I would remain completely unaware of my existence for the next three years.

For some reason, as yet unexplained to me, my Father had told my siblings that I would be a girl. I was to be called 'Katie'. Before the days of scanning, the reason for this prognostication was the apparently slight size of my Mother's belly during pregnancy, or so I have been told.

Anyway, as former girlfriends, and fellow boys in the school showers can attest, if asked, I am actually a man, just as I used to be a boy. I have not always been glad about this fact, it must be said, and I've often sighed at the female's privileged permission to wax lyrical about all things emotional, as well as to have the greater freedom in the range of attire she can uncontroversially wear, 'cross-dressing' (barring the male suit) having become for her an almost non-existent phenonemon in modern western life.

Even during those times when I have most wanted to die, I never actually wished, I think, that I had never been born. So here today may I take this opportunity to be thankful for the fact that I am, to thank my Mother for her role in this event (I am additionally glad that by being Caesarian, like Macduff, 'not of woman born', I did not cause her pain), to thank my late Father also if he can read this, and to express the pointless wish that I continue to be glad to be alive, and if possible, though this be not possible, not to get any older - or, at the least, for the advance of my grey hair to slow the fuck down.

Most weird, it might be thought, that we celebrate the fact that we're getting older, one year closer to death, as the Floyd might have it. Still, if the 'number issue' (a Babylonian contrivance anyway it must be admitted) can be laid to one side, and the days of ones birthday merely be understood as an opportunity to remember to be glad to be alive, then I have no scruples at all in wishing myself a very Happy Birthday!

This birthday I share with the President of Syria, as it happens, who is six years older than me, and has far less grey hair (dye or no dye)! I also share it with D.H.Lawrence. September 11 is also the death-day of Nikita Khruschev who managed to live comfortably in retirement despite being ousted by Brezhnev.

My birthday is also, as everyone knows, famous for the collapsing of the Twin Towers and related plane crashes and the tragic death of those affected, an event which is generally, though not universally, thought to have been brought about by Osama Bin Laden and his friends without the complicity, or knowledge, of any western agency. Those who question this consensus think (and claim to be able to prove) either that he did it with western help and/or knowledge, or that he had no part in it all, it having been an utterly inside job.

I, of course, know nothing, though I must say I would like to think the western world did not kill its own people in order to justify the Neo-Conservative agenda, so I suppose I'm a bit biased.

If Western Governments did play a role, however, (which I sincerely hope they didn't) then utter, unending shame on you, you meglomaniacal crusading bastards.

If they didn't, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my invitation to Osama and the like to desist from their bloodlusts and involve themselves in pursuits altogether more charming.

Yours pompously and utterly self-obsessed, although I hope not selfishly,

Jonathan Mark Tillotson