My fiftieth birthday celebration was a disaster. Everything was wrong:

1. The timing – a Wednesday lunchtime when everyone was at work
2. The venue – a boring hotel dining room in rainy Manchester
3. The guest list – dreary external work colleagues (some of whom I did not even know), plus my poor parents who had nothing in common with the former
4. The speeches – nobody wanted to listen to mine
5. The food – dull, dull, dull

If only JC had been there, then everything would have been so much better.