It’s a good indication that you’re getting old when you start looking forward to baths. Fancying the housewives on TV ads for household products is probably a good sign as well. There are other little giveaways too. For example, I’ve recently discovered that I really like peas. Also, nowadays, when one of my friends announces that they’re going to have a baby, my automatic response is more likely to be: ‘Congratulations!’ rather than: ‘Shit, I’m sorry to hear that, what are you going to do?’
There are physical signs too. I’m beginning to feel the effects of smoking – a severe shortness of breath and a throaty, phlegm filled laugh. I eat the same amount as I always have but now I have a waistline that’s rapidly getting out of control and I’m starting to realise that there are some foods that I just shouldn’t touch.
Alcohol is another thing – I can’t drink like I once could. My hangovers used to be powerful and frightening. I’d wake up feeling like absolute death, the only way to cope being to throw up repeatedly and stand with my face in a bowl of cold water. At least I knew where I stood with them though, at least it got all the horror out of the way in one concentrated burst so that by mid-afternoon I’d be back to normal. I prefer those to the ones I get now. You couldn’t even call them proper hangovers, I just get incredibly tired and incredibly stupid. My head seems to be filled with thick treacle and I’m no use to anyone for about two days. Sometimes, I have to get hammered on red wine just to make sure that at least I’ve got a decent headache in the morning to remind me of what I’ve done.
These things all lead to the dawning realisation that I’m not going to live forever – a creeping sense of my own mortality. The future’s no longer off in the distance somewhere, vague and undefined like it was when I was younger. Instead it’s real and frightening, looming oppressively over everything I do.
The natural instinct of course is to panic. Generally this means grabbing everything you can and using it all as a barricade, safely cushioning yourself with a career, house, partner and all the rest of it. At that point you give up on the idea of changing the world and settle for simply changing the world around you.
The trouble is, those responsibilities tend to anchor you to the spot. As the wider world moves on and changes, your stable little one stagnates and narrows. Life becomes more about protecting what you’ve got rather than finding out what you want. Piddling little obsessions like guttering and bin collections and wind farms spoiling the scenery will start to assume levels of importance that you never dreamed of when you were twenty-five. Your opinions and beliefs will set rigid and you’ll use them as a stick to beat away any different viewpoint that might threaten the safety of your routine. Maybe you’ll write letters to your local newspaper moaning about how society is going to the dogs. Maybe you’ll even vote Conservative and start reading the Daily Mail – they say that you get more right-wing as you get older.
The prospect of that still scares me to death.
Ok, so I know that when I wear a cardigan, I now look less like a guitarist in an indie band and more like Val Doonican. I also know that when I see a 23 year old in a short skirt in January, I no longer think: ‘Christ, look at that,’ and instead: ‘Christ, I bet she’s cold’. But I’ll be buggered if I’m going to start acting my age. I still admire recklessness and adventure and freedom - I still want those things for myself. I’m not ready to give up on them regardless of expectations or peer pressure or my biological clock. It may be immaturity on my part, but if it is, so what? The day I settle for things is the day I do become old.
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