Most years I make myself a New Year’s Eve dress; mainly as a consolation and armour for having to go out on an evening that everyone is out and staying home feels like a worse idea than being out. This year’s occasion is my 40th birthday, which seems to warrant a fancy dress more than NYE. I am not freaked out about my age, as most seem to assume when I tell them that I am about to turn 40. The last few years it isn’t so much the number that freaks me out, but birthdays in general. Like holidays where there is too much pressure to have a great…