The Real Seven Signs of Ageing

(There’s nothing like a whole month of putting your novel before your ablutions to make you look like a geriatric bushpig . . .)



1. Going out to buy a pair of sensible winter boots and coming home with your first pair of heels in nearly four years (heels and buggy-pushing are incompatible to my mind). Blue leather, wedge-heeled, adorable – still in the box, of course, because where the hell am I going to wear them? Totter up the high street to nursery? Stumble all round the supermarket, gripping the handlebar of the buggy for dear life? That’s why I popped into Primark this week and bought the £8 Sensible Pair. They are currently upside down on the heater - £8 doesn’t buy you waterproof, apparently.


2. Feeling too stiff to bend down and scrape off the fossilised Cheerios from the kitchen floor. Smirking at the sight of The Boy attempting to pick them up; sitting back with a lovely cup of tea as he continues to do this for ten minutes.


3. Buying some Olay night-cream (with age-defying pentapeptides!) – but still calling it Oil of Ulay. Running to the bathroom mirror every morning, like a hopeful child towards a Christmas tree, to monitor the improvement of fine lines, etcetera


4. Turning round to check the width of your bum in the mirror but instead having a sharp intake of breath at the state of your elbows. Vaguely remembering your mother telling you to moisturise them from an early age. Cursing her. Cursing yourself for ignoring her sound advice. Covering your elbows with a cardigan.


5. Doing a complete about-turn on plastic surgery as you catch sight of yourself braless in pyjamas. Cursing Mother Nature, gravity and your children.


6. Forgetting what number six is, but knowing it’s something fairly depressing.


7. Having this conversation in the first place.

Feel free to add some of your own.