Oh joy. I will be forty 39 plus 1 in less than half a year. I won’t be celebrating, but rather I shall be holding a memorial service to my first 40 years, along with lashings of wine and copious amounts of cake.
To help me feel even more inadequate than usual, The Sunday Times Style magazine thoughtfully published a list of ’40 Things To Do Before You’re 40.’Here’s some of the ones I haven’t done and have no hope of doing before August:
- Get an accountant – ha ha thud. That’s me laughing my head off.
- Bin all your tights and replace the lot with Falke – unfashionable me has no idea what/who Falke is. Hopeless.
- Have a kinky dream about a colleague – the builder? Seriously?
- Go to Glastonbury – nope.
- Host an afterparty that people still talk about years later – what the heck’s an afterparty and why have I never been to one?
- Stop wearing lycra – never.
- Spend a year with an incredibly flat stomach – and give up Maltesers and toast? Crazy.
- Unwrap a diamond – not unless it’s a Diamond White cider party pack.
- Grow your hair so long that it covers your nipples – one word – why?
But here’s some I have done:
- Decide whether you want children – yup, I’m keeping the Teenager.
- Be able to order wine confidently – ‘Cheapest bottle of your house white, and make it snappy, my good man.’
- Pull an all-nighter, drink sambuca, dance on the tables, then go straight to work – too many times to mention.
- Live abroad long enough to get a taste for the local breakfast – those were the days. Sigh.
- Witness a birth – I was definitely there when The Teenager was born.
- Perfect your signature roast chicken – Waitrose, I love you.
Don’t you just hate these lists? Here’s my kind of list – recently-announced top 5 snacks in the UK (drum roll….) bacon butties came out top, no doubt helped along by my recent alarming consumption of them. They were closely followed by cheese on toast, sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and Scotch eggs. Now that’s a list you can get your teeth into…