Due to my incredible popularity, I’ve attended a host of birthday parties over the last few weeks, ranging in age from 1 to 60 years. It always astounds me that humans literally celebrate – with cake and hard liquor (it was a wild one-year-old’s party) – the fact that we aren’t dead yet. Because that’s all it is. Hip hip hooray, you’ve survived the Hunger Games that is modern life!

Those people who say things like ‘dear grandpa would’ve been 90 today’ are misinformed. No, grandpa died at 49 years old from syphilis he contracted while on tour in Korea. He wouldn’t have been 90, unless he had a time-travelling DeLorean and a wild-haired professor who somehow shifted his timeline. Grandpa dead.

Although the truth is, we probably have more reason to celebrate our birthdays than they did a few generations back. Having recently attended both a 50^th and 60^th birthday party (mine is a diverse and varied life filled with many aged folk) and I was struck by the fact that, despite their debaucherous lifestyles (which I can most certainly vouch for) they still looked pretty damn good, all things considered.

I compare them to the images of my grandmother’s parents that lovingly adorn her walls. Not quite still-life paintings, but one model up, the photographs depict these wrinkled, withered, bespectacled creatures who looked like they were about to be read their last rites.

They were probably already sitting on one of those Viking ships that they burn and send out to sea when you die. They honestly looked old enough to run for president. You know they were named something like Edith, Edna, or Beryl. But, when asked about their ages, I almost had a heart attack myself to learn that they were nigh on 50 at the time.

Honestly, these women made the Golden Girls look like those Kardashians, 15 boob jobs back. I suppose, back then, if you got a papercut, they started firing up the pyre, and Botox was probably something you sprinkled on your husband’s food to kill him quicker.

Feminism and women’s rights were a long way off (especially for my relatives – if they burned their bras, they’d fall over face first from the sudden upfront weight), so these women would spend long days churning butter and churning out kids.

Now them I can understand celebrating each birthday with much jubilation – survival was rare, and knowing your birth date even rarer. Yet in our modern lifestyles, we seem to have embraced these endless celebrations despite them repeating year after year, while constantly finding new, inane things to celebrate.

Baby showers. Baby sprinkles. Gender reveal parties. Gender reveal apology parties for getting the original gender wrong. Engagements. Hen’s Parties. Bull’s Parties. Weddings. Divorce parties. Transgender reveal wedding showers. It’s all getting too much, especially for those of us who can’t afford the gifts, trips, and inevitable Emergency Room stomach pumps after the fact.

I have a grandmother knocking on 98 years old, who’s probably going to outlive us all (if we can just get her to stop changing the damn TV channels into Mandarin). Imagine if she had to attend every mindless invite that came her way? With all the money she’d spend on gifts, she’d barely leave enough inheritance to cover my drinking habit.

I think we need to get back to the basics and start celebrating only the really big life events – the way great-great-granny Edna used to do. For them, it was commemorating events like a successful harvest, marrying your cousin, or surviving another World War.

We’ll have to modernise these a bit with celebrating events like surviving a 2^nd Donald Trump presidency without a nuclear war; getting through another summer of global warming; and affording to pay rent and buy groceries – all in the same month.

Anyway, must dash. Have some remote control shopping to do for a 98-year-old’s party.