Friday 20 August 2010

When I grow up I want to be.......

Tom Baker very wisely once said that “the older we get, the older old is.” And someone as clever as a former time-lord is not a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking to my rapidly ageing social group, the doctor’s haunting words get truer by the day. As the big 3-0 draws closer, I find an impending sense of doom as a multitude of burning questions frequently infiltrate my mind.

At what age does it stop being socially acceptable to wear hot pants?

Will there come a time when I don’t feel just a little bit tired?

What is the point of N Dubz?

At the age of 26, we were in a nightclub when a group of boys started speaking to us. When they asked our age, one declared: “Wow, I’ve never spoken to a 26 year-old woman before.” Charming. They were 19.

But for this reason I have started asking boys for ID before agreeing to speak to them in bars for fear of finding my name slammed down on some sort of register.

A good friend experienced a far more traumatic incident when she was a mere 23. She was in a changing cubicle at the swimming baths when a small child accidentally pulled the curtain back on her. He ran away shouting mummy, I’ve just walked in on an old lady.” Needless to say the friend was mortified, the effects of the incident so far reaching that they have psychologically scarred her for life.

Adding to this, one morning a few weeks back I proudly announced that I was the only one of my social group to have retained a barnett devoid of grey. The very same day my French hairdressing housemate pointed out, amid shrieks of mock-horror, that he had discovered not just one, but a whole patch of silvery strands erupting from my scalp. As confirmation of his discovery, he yanked several out, handing me the stone-cold evidence of a dissipating youth.

Yes we fear the wrinkles and the aches and pains that lay ahead. But we’re trapped in a vicious cycle of clock watching as the minutes of our nine ‘til five monotonous existences tick by, only to spend the evenings and weekends wondering where the years have gone.

Obviously there are some things that demonstrate the demise into middle-aged-dom. Steadily slipping away from Radio 1 and into the realms of “dad rock” Radio 2, and finding ourselves cursing the youth of today for their lack of respect.

But asides for a minor boy-hating lesbian phase at the age of four, when I visualised walking up the aisle with another woman, I have always romanticised the idea of marrying the love of my life moving a cosy cottage, with a dog for our son Radley and a budgerigar for wee daughter Tilly.

We’d eat organic and drink fair-trade and buy all our clothes from Gap and Next.

But the years are definitely getting shorter, there’s not enough time to do everything I want to do while I’m young. I still want all the things that adults have. But when I grow up. When the fuck that is going to happen, I cannot even hazard a guess.