The curtains are about to come down, I am about to run off into the wings and await my new chapter, the twenties have come and now it seems, they are off – off to concentrate on younger firmer more nubile beings. (God, I was so close to bitterness there). But no, not digressing – I have had fun, I have shed tears and now it seems I am about to shed many more. I attempt to put my arms out wide to embrace the thirties, but I am struggling, it is hard and I quite simply don’t want to move on.

I can see some good in well, getting older – leaving the twenties. Finally rid of the decade of angst and confusion, a decade that leaves you mystified as to where you stand? You are still smirked at for speaking at meetings but then expected to start thinking seriously about popping wee ones. Some friends are constructing their picket fences whilst you are pontificating over which drink does more justice, whisky or vodka (and on that one you could bore to tears). You should have a career, at the very least be management level but you are still stirring other people coffees and making arrangement for their holiday destinations. This is quite simply not what you had bargained for! And doing all kinds of menial work whilst suffering the consequences of a 24-hour bender. You are simply confused, as you massage your shoulders – this due to having slept on a friends couch, a friend who has just purchased said house. It seems that there are two types of twenty something’s; those that have everything you want and then you. But these are minor glitches to being young, these are flaws that can be ironed out, and besides as you near the age of official adulthood you acknowledge that you still don’t have a house, a decent job or a boyfriend, you are still waddling in the shallow end, and the sad part is that your companions are eighteen year olds and it seems as though even they are about to leave the still waters. You are utterly depressed, of course, you realise that depression is most notable in twenty something’s and so this makes you slightly happier – for just a while.

And as thirty is about to crash land like the uninvited meteor it is you can’t help but lament your single life (once again) and bore those around you with your sorrowful laments. Thirty and single! It’s not such a bad thing of course, people are single at all ages (admittedly) but it’s thirty and single mingled with being single for the past ten years.

There’s still hope in your twenties, when you are looking your best. You can awake with a hangover and make-up crusted and realise you still look somewhat sexy, but as age bashes its stuff the make up cake into the new sudden lines, your greys stand up erect defying you and your pleas ‘To just bloody settle down!’ but no, they are there to taunt and it seems keep you in place, your skin seems suddenly grey and mascara your ever attending friend, a sharp contrast to your teenage tongue bemoaning the ‘eighties lick across your cheek…what’s up with that!’ oh but then you did not know! And the body – oh the body! What was once firm (and taken on a dizzy round about of for granted) is now strolling (slowly) south, hoping for a meet-up with their cousins, the knees (but you know those too will start and that’s a thought you shudder to let in). There are lines beneath your eyes and smiling is now put on hold, saved for special events and even then, its limited and full smiles are refuted. And it’s for these very reasons that you look at the door to your looming thirties with such fright, you are single and your outward self is disintegrating, you wonder if you will ever find a decent man and then you wonder if you will ever find a man.

Single is not the worst thing, of course, because you could concentrate on your career, have cosy dinners accompanied by wine and girlfriends in your luxurious flat but then it dawns on you – reality – that you don’t have a degree, neither do you have a job that gives any credence to respect and at the simple things you aren’t particularly good (the complex ones you don’t think of) and so it dawns on you that you might be single and working in a beaten down job because there’s very little else you can do and then suddenly like a jolt of lightning you see your smoky (why give up?) odour body rocking back and forth back and forth on the wicker chair, a cat on your lap (the smell of cat urine pungent), tepid tea besides you and some treacherous soap opera (Emmerdale) on the box; back and forth.

And then, well – whilst you’re being dramatic you wonder – when is it too old to want the comforts of your parents looking after you? You want the singsong voice (fuelled with love) in your mothers voice to offer you a cup of tea as you lie tired and groggy and hung over in bed and she doesn’t seem to mind. You want you father to insist that he will sort out your bills and paperwork that are clearly written in another language. You just want your parents, you want them to look after you and whilst just a couple of years ago you could say this out loud you are fearful of the fact that this can look somewhat dubious and sad. More frightening is that you realise that soon the onus will be on YOU, it will be your responsibility to look after your parents as the circle squelches and you wonder how you can repay such favours, as you stare in dismay at your bulging credit card bill and the red reminders flooding your letter box.

So when just is adulthood official, at 21! You simply must be behind the times because you still feel remarkably like a child and you have no material to confirm adulthood, perhaps its thirty but if the magazines should be believed and taken as firm, then if Forty is the new thirty you are 19 and that let me tell you is absolutely bloody fine!