When it comes to star signs, I’m like any other rational person with a healthy degree of scepticism. I curl my lip dismissively at the negative traits, before seizing on, and wildly accentuating, the positive. It’s probably another top Aries quality, along with those outlined below – a gift from a mate many spent candles ago that has followed me around each house I’ve inhabited ever since.

You can just imagine me over the years, pausing mid-ascent of the stairs for a sneaky self-regarding smile over at my leadership feats; reaching for the toilet paper and looking up to proudly reflect on my pioneering ambition; interrupting my quest to find clean underwear to admiringly gaze over at my confidence and dynamism above the laundry basket. The list goes on.

As the birthday cake pile-up gets out of hand, I’m finally more willing to square up to the truth lurking behind these images. Probably not a noted Aries trait, but by good luck I got out of the Pisces side of the astrological bed; the only time I’ve ever been early for anything. Apparently they hogged all the sensitivity and even get credit for it. Fuckers. No wonder us Aries are a demanding fiery lot.

Top of the pics apparently shows me whistling ahead of the pack leading them to the knock-down price cheese selection in Tesco. A leader with initiative? Or…a prophetic image sealing my inescapable fate that would see me back in the bloody North. Turns out that’s not me at all. I’m actually stuck at the traffic lights waiting for them to pass trying to stump up an explanation to requests from a two-year old in the back seat to tell her what these men in sashes are at. I can’t produce anything more entertaining than the truth. A low point for the competitive Aries.

Moving down to my summit-conquering triumph. Get me nearing the top of the mountain. Pioneering and competitive? Or…typically making work for myself when I could just have taken a flight over the mountain at half the personal cost. Or trained as an astronaut to fly my own spaceship over every mountain there ever was. That’s probably a Scorpio there by the rocket. Any I know tend to be over-achieving in something. Space travel included. They started out on acid and E; they ended up on Mars. There was a certain inevitability about it.

The next station of the cross reveals my apparent heroic life-saving tendencies. This was part of that team-building away day in Cavan a few years back. The crocodile had been deprived of food for the previous three days so Seanie threw it a battered sausage out of sympathy. It only antagonised it further. Courageous or daring? Or…thick and idiotic of me not to dive in front of Seanie to avoid wasting a perfectly good sausage? Predictably concentrating my energies in all the wrong places.

Catch me some time later leading a group lesson on how to do The Conga. A beginners class by the looks of them; the one immediately to my left clearly unimpressed with my Hitler joke. Confident and dynamic? Or…once again feeling very obviously exposed in public. I lie; it must’ve been well before the Cavan trip as my breasts are still in nifty enough condition.

Finally, there I am at school. I can’t remember exactly what the lesson was, but I’m guessing maths or religion.

I will do as I am told

I will do as I am told

I will do the Morcambe & Wise dance instead

Happy Birthday fellow Aries. May your new year of life bring you the sunshine you crave, and sometimes unreasonably demand.

(Aries art – Anna Nielsen)