growing up

29 things I’ve learnt in 29 years

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I found a grey hair.

That’s weird, I thought, I’ve never had any blond hairs grow from the root before, I’ve always had to dye those in. It’s a summertime miracle!

But then I looked closer and saw that both the light and my deluded brain were playing tricks on me. The strand before me was quite clearly grey.

And it’s not all that surprising. On Friday of this week I will turn 29. That big serious age that comes right before 30 when I’ll have to stop spending Friday nights chomping through cheese puffs and start acting like a proper person.

But thankfully my years have not been completely wasted; I have at least learnt a thing or two. So this week, with my birthday on the horizon and the dawn of my thirtieth year just around the corner (WHY GOD, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?), I thought I would share the top 29 of those things – one for every year of my existence. Feel free to thank me for my wisdom on Friday with cake.

1. Pants-wise, there comes a time when only full knickers will do. That time is now.

2. A house without cheese is like a purse the day before payday. Empty and hopeless.

3. One should buy the amount of chocolate one intends to eat. You will not save the other half until tomorrow, you are lying.

4. If a man cannot find you attractive in a pair of pyjamas, your relationship is not going to last. He’ll see you in those bad boys much more frequently than anything else.

5. Aggressive people are always much crosser with themselves than they are with you. (Though mentioning that will probably not help.)

6. Pumps are not shoes, they are outdoor slippers. If it hasn’t got a strap and a solid sole, I’m not wearing it.

7. Mascara is the greatest invention of all time.

8. …closely followed by dry shampoo.

9. My mum was right; you really shouldn’t walk around whilst cleaning your teeth. That sh*t gets everywhere.

10. She also said that everything will look better in the morning. And she was right. (Except my face. After six hours crushed into a pillow, that looks MUCH worse. See points 7 and 8 for the solution).

11. The person who gets out of the shower or bath always feels much better than the person who got in (unless the hot water is broken. A quick heat test beforehand will help avoid disappointment).

12. You have rarely truly lost a pair of earrings; they are just waiting for you in a handbag you’ve forgotten you own.

13. Life is too short to drink ‘from concentrate’ fruit juice.

14. Under no circumstances should a working person be expected to go out on a Monday night.

15. Your relationship with your other half should be the easiest of all. The rest of the world will bring you plenty of drama to help keep things interesting.

16. Two-ply tissues aren’t worth anybody’s time or money.

17. It is never worth spending lots of money on an umbrella, sunglasses or gloves. It’s like they want you to lose them.

18. However much a pair of heels are hurting your feet, don’t take them off until you get home. Putting them back on again to travel will bring more pain than any human should endure.

19. If you want an adult to sleep anywhere other than their own bed, you need to make it seriously worth their while.

20. If you’re lucky, your siblings will become friends who just happen to have the same parents as you (for whom the memory of your older brother pushing a poached egg into your face will always remain embarrassingly clear).

21. Regardless of the circumstances, from the moment a woman decides that she’s going to bed, she is always at least half an hour from laying her head on the pillow.

22. If you have to chase somebody just to keep them in your life, it’s probably not worth the effort. (Unless that person is driving an ice cream van in which case RUN!)

23. There is no greater feeling on earth than getting into a freshly changed bed with newly shaved legs. (Whether they’re your own or someone else’s.)

24. If you notice that a person has food or pen on their face, it is your duty to let them know.

25. Cooking rice is 100% easier if you read the instructions on the packet. Who knew?

26. The original Percy Pig sweet will always be the strongest of the franchise. The rest of his pals can jog/trot on.

27. If you can leave a job having made just two good friends, that is a major achievement.

28. A sandwich served without crisps is like a day without sunshine. Just a massive waste of everybody’s time.

29. There is never just one grey hair.

When dear friends get married: Why I always cry at weddings

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When you get to our age, you find yourself going to a lot of weddings.

It’s how people in their late twenties/early thirties spend their weekends – we go to weddings, we go to hen and stag dos and we have conversations about how much worse our hangovers are now that we’re old. We’re a lot of fun.

And it’s very easy to feel cynical about all these nuptials. Weddings are tiring, our feet weren’t made for wearing high heels for 12 hours straight (particularly the boys), and our stomachs takes days to forgive us for eating our meals at funny times of the day.

But that stuff is all just logistics. The real reason we go to weddings is well worth getting a few blisters and a confused tummy for.

I’ve seen lots of my friends get married now. Real, dear, close chums with whom I’ve shared various periods of my life – school, university, jobs, that time when I learnt that I don’t get on with Sambuca… We’ve grown up together, one way or another, so when one of us gets married, it feels like a big day for all of us.

There’s not much else that we get to see our friends commit to that is so significant (though the pals who witnessed my ‘let’s wear nothing but fuchsia pink!’ phase might feel differently) so being there to witness it is a real privilege.

And for me, seeing a close friend walk down the aisle to marry the person with whom they’ll spend the rest of their life is enough to bring not just a tear but a flood to my eyes. While lots of people express joy through smiling, I do it by turning my face into a waterfall. I’ve tried not to do it, to think of all the make-up I piled on just moments before and hold it together, but I fail every time.

And if my friend getting married cries too then I might as well just call it a day and go to bed – I’m such a mess by the time they’re pronounced husband and wife that you’d think I’d been watching The Notebook. Whilst newborn babies manage to behave beautifully throughout the ceremony, it is me who needs to be carried out and wiped down.

But I actually think it’s a good thing. However you express pride in your friends, whether through tears, grins or high fives, it’s good to show it. One of the best things about being an adult is being able to look back on the times we’ve spent with our chums – the nights in eating cheese, the nights out dancing to cheese – and feel utterly amazed that somehow we’re suddenly grown up enough to do something as serious as getting married. The fact that one of our parents hasn’t stepped in to tell us to stop showing off and calm down still amazes me.

For all the panda eyes and weeping and resulting dehydration, weddings remain one of the best ways to spend a weekend. Seeing a friend looking happier than they ever have before (with the small exception of that time the DJ played a Five vs Blue megamix on their hen do – good luck beating that, hubby!) is just about as good as it gets.

And whether you’re likely to cry during the ceremony or not, I still recommend taking a packet of tissues with you to a wedding. At our age, the hangover you get the following morning is enough to make anybody sob.

Will it be cold there? Will I get a seat? And other things grown-ups think about

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hand-gelYour brain changes as you get older.

You think more about the weather, the next time you’ll get to sit down and how much washing you need to get done, and less about about parties and hair glitter and whether you’re ready to take the dance routine you made up to Picture Of You by Boyzone to a wider audience.

And I guess it’s inevitable now that we’re responsible for more than just our social life and our cassette collection – there are bills to pay and gardens to weed and conversations about the benefits of online grocery shopping that just have to be had.

And this change of focus affects pretty much everything – our approach to going out, to seeing friends, to deciding what type of surface we’re willing to sleep on…

And even though we’re not so old that we’re not still presented with some of the same opportunities as there were when we were younger – there are still parties (weddings), and gigs (YouTube) and even sleepovers (cohabitation) – when they do come up, our grown-up brains will think about things that wouldn’t even have occurred to us when we were younger. Allow me to compare – though please note that, as a person who was young in the nineties and early noughties, my concept of what a young person thinks about may be slightly out of date.

Scenario 1: Going to a party/pub/wedding/on holiday/on a train/leaving the house to do anything whatsoever
Young person thoughts: Will there be booze? How do I get the booze? Will he/she be there? Is this the right occasion for me to wear my skirt-trouser?
Adult thoughts: Will I be too cold? Will I be too hot? Will water be readily available? Will I get a seat? What is the toilet situation? Is there a lot of walking involved? Will there be dickheads?

Scenario 2: Selecting a new dress
Young person thoughts: Is this something Baby Spice would wear? Do my platform trainers go with it?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a pocket that will hold a tissue? Can I wear proper pants with it? Is it dry-clean only? (Because if it is, you can forget it.)

Scenario 3: Choosing a new handbag
Young person thoughts: Is it big enough to hold this inexplicably enormous ring binder I insist on owning? And this tin pencil case I’ve covered with my initials written in Tipp-Ex?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a good zip? What is the pocket situation? Is it so deep that I’ll never be able to find anything? Is it big enough to hold an umbrella, cardigan and Tupperware box? Does it have a good handle?

Scenario 4: Somebody coming to stay at your house
Young person thoughts: Is it a boy? Does he smell? Could I beat him at Street Fighter II?
Adult thoughts: Are they clean? Do they respect bathrooms? Will they notice that I haven’t dusted the television?

Scenario 5: Going away for the weekend
Young person thoughts: Will there be a TV? Can I watch Gladiators?
Adult thoughts: Will I be back earlier enough on Sunday to do my washing? Will there be dickheads?

Yes, we think very differently now.

I don’t remember when things changed; when antibacterial hand wash started mattering more to me than my mobile phone, or when I first wanted to bail on a trip to the cinema on the off-chance that somebody might sniff during the film… but now that we’re here there’s no turning back.

But thankfully it doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun, we’re just a little more prescriptive. If you can find us a wedding party with comfortable chairs, a steady supply of H2O, sparklingly clean toilets and with a minimal number of dickheads on the guest list, then you’re in for quite the party.

And if there happens to be some Boyzone on the playlist then that’s even better. I’ve been working on a little something I think you’ll enjoy…

Friendship: It’s about quality not quantity

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IMG_6367It’s a strange moment when you suddenly stop worrying about whether you’ve got enough friends.

For years it’s a genuine concern. If you have a party, will anybody come? Do you get enough text messages that aren’t just from your mum or Domino’s Pizza? And exactly how many non-family birthday cards did you get last year?

At school, it always felt like size mattered in the chums department. The bigger the group you were a part of, the smaller the chance that you would find yourself sitting alone in French with nobody to tell that you’d been “à la piscine” at the weekend.

And at university a heavy group of pals meant people to sit sleepy-eyed with in lectures, to consume large sandwiches with at obscure times of the day, and to go out with of a Wednesday evening, rather than sitting at home doing a glossy magazine quiz about which FRIENDS character best reflects your personality. You already knew the answer to that anyway. (Gunther.)

And that’s not to undermine those friendships – they’re the making of some of the best days of your life – it’s just impossible to keep up with that volume of people once real life starts getting in the way.

The combination of going to work, eating meals, sorting through your post, washing clothes, filling the dishwasher, entering online competitions, watching The Magaluf Weekender, and actually going to sleep for more than four hours a night dominates most of the week. It’s a wonder you can keep on top of what’s going on with you, let alone anybody else.

So if you do manage to spend time with another human being – aside from your colleagues, the dude at the sorting office and your grocery delivery man – it’s because you really want to.

And now that you’re an adult, though you don’t demand much of that person in terms of time, you do when it comes to quality of friendship.

If I meet up with a pal and I ask how they are, I’m looking for a proper answer. I’m not looking for a fluffy “Yeah sure everything’s fine – shall we get the chicken?” response (although my answer will of course always be Yes), I want: “Right, strap in for a full-blown analysis of my life”. If I didn’t care then I wouldn’t have blocked out my Thursday night – you do know that Eastenders is shown on Thursday evenings, right?

And of course it works both ways. I want to know the ins and outs of what’s happening with you and then you, dear friend, are going to get the precise same from me. I have a husband who doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of “Please unplug the iron”, a fringe I can’t control, and a marshmallow habit I fear is getting out of hand – who else am I going to talk to about this sh*t?

A good catch up with a good friend is better for your soul than any drug, massage or – dare I say it – confectionery item money can buy. And the truth is that, at this age, most of us would rather spend our time with the buddies we know we can really chew the fat with – metaphorical and literal (and ideally BBQ sauce-covered) – than spend an evening with 50 people we hardly know just so that Facebook can see how popular we are.

Because those are the chums that are really worth giving up a night in front of the telly for. And that, my friend, is no small compliment.

10 things that should not happen during your first three months of marriage

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10 things that should not happen during your first three months of marriage1. You get a sore throat that makes your voice deeper than his.

2. You get new blinds. Because when people ask what’s new with you, the answer is that you got new blinds. Nobody cares about your blinds.

3. You discover that one of the walls in your flat is riddled with damp and that you’re going to have to rip out your entire kitchen to fix it. Some of the dust might get on the blinds.

4. You find a wall of mould behind your wardrobe, that all your clothes are covered in mould and that if you’d just opened the chuffing window every once in a while this never would have happened.

5. You discuss the damp and mould situation over email and text message. I understand some people are into sexting; the only photographs we’ve sent each other recently are of dehumidifiers.

6. You spend more time speaking to British Gas about your temperamental boiler than to each other.

7. You fail to notice that your prescription for The Pill is running out, have to spend a week without it, and turn into an, albeit short-term, psychopath.

8. You develop a daily craving for boiled eggs and soldiers and start every post-work conversation with an update on the gooey-ness of that morning’s breakfast. He is not interested.

9. You get a water bill. Nobody deserves a water bill.

10. You’re forced to say “Well, thank goodness the wedding is over!” when you discover how much cash you have to spend on all of the above. Eggs don’t come cheap, you know.

How to sober up in 10 seconds

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IMG_1799If you venture out of a Friday night, consume a cocktail or four and not much dinner, you may well feel a little dizzy on your arrival home. What one is looking for in this situation is a piece of toast, a sit down, and perhaps a calming bath. Upon my return last night this was exactly the trio I had in mind, and yet what I found when I opened the door was a very worried looking boyfriend (mine, to clarify) and a fair level of blood scattered around the flat.

A number of questions popped to mind at this sight, and it was only when he put his two bandaged fingers in front of me that I was at least able to confirm that there was a rational explanation. The expression on his face was similar to that of a child showing a grazed knee – unsure as to how he’d done so much damage, scared by the blood, and just starting to realise that it really really hurt. Of course the main difference is that there were no tears and no bike involved. No, this little injury occurred due to the accidental close proximity of a razor to the house keys in his bag. An eagerness to get in the front door and a lack of light led to what I understand was a very quick and sharp shredding of the tops of two digits. Let this be a lesson to us all.

If there is to be anything good to come of this unexpectedly bloody start to the weekend, let it be this: I am the most squeamish of people and really no use to anyone in the face of a physical crisis; something happens to my knees and my arms start to flap and I generally try to keep my eyes and ears closed ’til it’s all over. But I was pleased to find that when asked by my injured dear this morning if I would take a look at the damage to assess whether stitches would be required, I stepped up. I can only take this as a sign of true love because I can assure you it was not pretty. The other good thing is that the distraction of last night’s events managed to make my brain forget that consumption of cocktails usually means that it must make the room start spinning every time I close my eyes.

It’s nice to find the silver lining.