I knew it would happen. I wasn't sure when, but I knew it would turn up one day: and it has. On Sunday the 29th of March 2010, to be precise. At 28 years, 3 months and 22 days old.
The day where I officially turned old.
Unfortunately, it didn't - as I assumed it would - coincide with the day where I also became responsible, or mature, or tidy, or organised, or sensitive to other people's thoughts or feelings. I thought it would happen all at once; that it was a kind of trade off. You know: you give up being cool or hot for a nice smelling kitchen and friends who no longer forget your birthday on purpose in vengeful retaliation. But it wasn't a trade off at all. Just as I now have spots and wrinkles, I am now old and immature. And it has crept up on me entirely without notice. Or without much notice, anyway (I should have noticed that I no longer use hair straighteners because 'what's the point').
It all happened on one trip to the pub, just before I left England.
"It's bloody freezing," my sister pointed out, because it was - as she had astutely noticed - bloody freezing.
"You need a better coat," I said, tugging at the ruffles of her very beautiful and trendy Brighton bought coat with pursed lips. "This is not warm enough."
My very beautiful and trendy Brighton based sister rolled her eyes at me.
"Yes, but look how pretty it is," she announced. "Who wants to be warm when you can wear something this amazing?"
"If it's not keeping you warm then it's not doing its job," I said disapprovingly, and - I'm ashamed to say - without the vaguest tone of irony.
"Its job is to make me look good," my sister replied. "Thus it is doing its job."
I tugged at the padded sleeve of my long, quilted, bogie green parka.
"You need a coat like this," I said smugly. "I'm cosy as you like. I could walk a dog for hours and hours and not feel the slightest chill."
My sister and I then both laughed warmly at the idea of me walking anything - dog or otherwise - for hours and hours.
"I might need a coat like that," she said eventually, when she had got her breath back. "But I sure as hell don't want one."
Then, as if the warm-but-ugly coat had set me off, it all started happening in quick succession. I turned down free wine because 'I might get a headache on the plane.' I ordered a side of vegetables because 'I hadn't really eaten any greens for a couple of days.' I found myself getting interested in a conversation about the BA strike. And then it happened: the point of no return.
"My God," I said as my youngest cousin turned up at the dinner table. "What has happened to you?! You've shot right up."
My youngest cousin - all eleven years of her - looked at me with what I can only describe as vague disgust.
"Hmm," she said.
"No, seriously," I said, still reeling from how much of a difference eight months makes to a ten year old girl. "You look like a grown up!"
"Hmm," she said again, sitting down and trying to move away while I pinched the sleeve of her jumper and breathlessly exclaimed something about how lovely it was, being gold and everything.
"Hasn't she grown?" I repeated to my sister, pointing at my now pink and mortified relative.
"Stop it, Holly," my sister said tiredly. "You sound like one of those embarrassing old Aunts."
"But she has," I said, suddenly realising that perhaps all the times I'd run away, bored and humiliated, from a similarly delighted old lady, perhaps she had also been genuinely startled by my dramatic increase in height and maturity. Perhaps I, too, really had grown.
"Seriously," my sister hissed. "Cut it out. You're embarrassing me."
So I gave up, and asked my fifteen year old cousin what A Levels she was doing and what her career plans were instead.
It doesn't sneak up on you at all, old age: it rushes up in scary, noisy little steps, making a big bang and clatter and bringing you to a stand-still, like the wrinkle under your eye that doesn't go away when you stop smiling, or the white hair that comes back no matter how quickly you pull it out. And then you go away, and you forget all about it, until you find yourself pointing out a pretty skirt and announcing you would never pay that much for a 'couple of flimsy bits of material', and it's there again, just one step closer.
It can make all the noise it likes, though. I know old age is coming, however small its steps, and I'm not scared at all of turning around and laughing in its face. In fact, I'm really quite looking forward to it. Perhaps I, too, really have grown.
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