When a friend asked, three weeks ago, what I’ll be doing for my birthday in October, I said: “Screaming into a mirror, probably,” which was kind of a Mother Gothel from Tangled joke, but not completely a joke either. When someone else asked about birthdays last week, I mumbled: “Oh, I’ll probably organise a drink somewhere,” which also wasn’t true, because, just like every other October, I’ll be operating a policy of dodging and denial.

I don’t like birthdays. Never have done. Not when I was little and it involved the wild decadence of a Wimpy Brown Derby doughnut with chocolate drizzle, and even less so as I grew older. Now, birthdays mark the years passing with ghoulish rapidity, as New Year lunges into Valentine’s Day, then summer solstice into Bonfire Night.

Where did the last year go? How have some of my contemporaries spent it winning Emmys, completing triathlons and lavishly renovating barns in an eco-compliant manner? I’ve still not quite got round to replacing the landing lightbulbs, which fused last October, because that involves a step-ladder. What are you doing for your birthday, Grace? Screaming into a mirror, in the dark.

With birthdays, the planet divides roughly into two sets of people, and both find the other equally bamboozling. There are those who adore their birthday, or their “birthday week”, as they often call it, unveiling a giddy schedule of opportunities to spend time with them, clutch their face and love them. All this cuddling, singing and cake unveiling will take place in holiday cottages, marquees, private dining rooms and roped-off areas of pubs. It will be costly, time-consuming and exhausting, but it’s easier to acquiesce and parp along supportively on a kazoo. These people loved birthdays as a child, and as adults count down to their big day on Facebook, saying: “Five more sleeps to Joyce-Fest!”

Then there are folk like me, and perhaps you, too, who feel anxious – for weeks beforehand – that anyone might be secretly commissioning ganache icing on their behalf. I mean, what if that hypothetical person is going to a lot of hassle, which is in turn making them secretly resentful? Won’t they, by trying to prove they love me, end up loving me a little less?

We’re not the ones asking people to block three days out of the diary in June 2020 and cart a fancy-dress outfit to the Yorkshire Dales

And what if they try to organise a party and find no one wants to come? Or what if my friends say they’ll come, but only because they feel obliged, when they’d rather watch TV horizontally in loose-fitting lounge pants? Because isn’t that what we’d all rather do, all of the time, always?

This is the sort of thing that crosses my mind before birthdays. Also that I do not want any presents, not ever. If I desire something badly enough, I’ll buy it for myself; and this thing will never be a Yankee Candle gift set or a book bought beside a shop till that delivers The Tao Of Pooh. This type of tat, accompanied by surprise singing, will also make me anxious.

Obviously this whining could make me – and other birthday-avoiders – sound self-absorbed and childish. But then we’re not the ones asking people to block three days out of the diary in June 2020, cart a fancy-dress outfit to the Yorkshire Dales and check out your “Dirty Thirty” gift register, which suggests pooling funds for a Swarovski decanter. We’re not the ones counting our birthday cards, identifying the friend who missed the Royal Mail delivery and posting passive-aggressive memes on Insta. We’re just ambling on, humbly asking for nothing gift-wrapped from anyone; life’s little troupers.

Is it too soon to argue about Christmas? Some monsters among us are very organised Read more

In fact, we are life’s immortal little troupers, because by hiding from birthdays, locking down all social media reminders and refusing to blow out candles, we have found the secret of circumnavigating time. Potentially.

Stick with me, as this is my least watertight but heartfelt theory of all. My plan, for several years, has been to simply let one year merge into the other, without fanfare, so that the Grim Reaper won’t notice me and move me closer to my exit interview. And it’s working. Look at me: I’m floating agelessly and enigmatically through the epochs, like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. By entirely refusing to eat Victoria sponge with candles or put up rows of cards with funny captions like “Decaying Old Bag” or “How ancient?”, I am buying myself decades, if not another century.

This won’t happen to you, Joyce, in your minibus en route to a friends-and-family paintballing excursion. We all know you’re 57. You’re carrying the number in gold helium balloons and wearing a sash that says “Birthday Girl”. Bang the big birthday drum if you like – I’m staying shtum. Death is going to find you before me. You’re making it too damn easy.