Accelerating from Twenty to Thirty

Let’s get things straight, when it comes to birthdays I’m a bit of an Eeyore. There all well and good when they belong to someone else, but mine always seem to come with some kind of light grey cloud over them.

This year is a big one, and I currently have only a few hours left of being able to say I’m ‘in my twenties’.

I thought everything was going well, and I’d be just the same. I’d have to be admit I was now Thirty years old – I’m not some ageing bleach-blonde Californian actress working my way from A-Z on the celebrity guest lists pretending I’m not getting older in the hope of winning a cameo appearance on Desperate Housewives or anything.

But I thought I wouldn’t feel older.

But then that light-grey cloud appeared, and as a result I’ve spent the last 2 weeks feeling like there’s absolutely no way my body is going last another 2 weeks, let alone 2-score years. First there was the cold, which was careless. I don’t get colds, but somehow this one slipped passed security. As a result, I spent the penultimate week of my twenties excreting enough nose-pooh to fill the river Thames, and with the consistency to hold together any one of the bridges that cross it. The nose-pollen was accompanied by a cough which helpfully warned any members of the public who were near me that I was carrying some kind of deadly nose-plague by causing me to emit a 60-a-day Mike Reid-alike cough loud enough to be heard by offshore shipping.

Then, just as the cold was passing the back-ache re-emerged and I spent the next day trying to avoid to sit or stand at the exact angle which made every muscle in my body shout ‘Oi! Ouch! What do you think you’re doing?!?’, before eventually conceding that that was the angle my body naturally resolves to.

I’d spent months telling myself it was just a number, but it appears ‘turning 30’ will surely require me to make some kind of warranty claim in respect to my body. All that excercise and diet-reform, and it was all for nothing.

As if the constant reminder from my aching limbs that we are all organisms slowly dying, my final pieces of post I received in my twenties were an ISA interest statement containing a leaflet on how banks are all a bit miffed that the credit-crunch happened, and another telling me that NOW is the time to start planning for my retirement with information on their pension plans and a half-hearted promise that they’ll try not to lose all the money this time.

There will, however, be a big difference to my thirties. Why? Because, ladies and gentlemen, I am now the owner of a ladder. Not just any old ladder, but an exciting-sounding 3-way ladder. Now there’s one thing I didn’t need in my twenties. Things are looking up.

So long as this week’s post doesn’t include any post with little pictures of June Whitfield gliding up the stairs on a metal-incarnation of the hand-of-God, or Des O’Connor telling me to start saving now for my funeral expenses and to write a Will to make sure my non-existent offspring and moggy will be catered for after my demise, I think I can handle it.

See you on the other side! (Of Thirty, obv… not this mortal coil or anything)