Thursday 24 July 2008

Pre Tricenarian Tension

"Why God, why?! We had a deal! Let the others grow old, not me!" Joey Tribbiani in, 'The One Where They All Turn Thirty'.

It's just a number. 30. It's the one before 31 and the one after 29. But there is something about the looming of this particular number on the very near horizon, which is causing me to take a panoramic look at my life both retrospecively and speculatively, with mild horror. I call it PTT.

Things that have changed:
* I can no longer eat what I want and do no excercise without gaining weight.
* Eating healthily and doing excercise doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.
* If I stay up past midnight for one night, that's the whole week wrecked.
* I'm pretty sure I need glasses.
* I listen to Radio 4.
* When I listen to Radio 1, I haven't heard of any of the bands, and all the songs sound the same.
* Pop stars are all younger than me.
* I have recently had acutal, non-ironic conversations about the following: mortgages, stain removal and pensions.
* Recently, with a bit of spare cash, I treated myself to 'something for the kitchen'.
* I iron T-shirts. In fact I only bought an iron this year. In fact my mum bought it for me because she was furious to discover I had gone that long in my life without having to endure the chore that she had been chained to for years.
* My body is suddenly telling me urgently that I must procreate by any means necessary, even though prior to this, the idea has been of virtually no interest at all.
* Things that I have been fairly relaxed about having not achieved so far, suddenly seem so significant that I feel like a fundamental failure without them. For example:

* I am not married.
* I have no babies.
* I am not financially solvent.
* I am not above the first rung of a 'career'.
* I still don't know how to apply makeup.
* I still ring my mummy when I feel sad (whenever I think about any of the above).
* I am still a bit scared of thunderstorms.
* I still go home for Christmas.
* I still sleep in a single bed.
* I still get spots.
* I still have an extremely peurile sense of humour. For example, just writing the following words is my idea of sophisticated wit: willy, bum, fanny, fart, trump, tit, flange.
* I am still laughing about the above.

Help me. I never thought Thirty would happen to me.