DORIAN GRAY ATE MY HAMSTER

It's a question I often find myself silently asking: at what point in my life did I start turning into that old fogey - the type of person I always swore I would never be? Age seems to have crept up and made itself at home when I wasn't looking. How could that even happen? After all, in my head I am still only 17 years old; when I look in the mirror I don't see the same "me" as everyone else - I see the "me" of 10 - 20,30 years ago. Still, perhaps the warning signs were there....

1.      Like when I started going to the coffee shop in the bookstore because it was quieter than the one in the main shopping centre and not full of sexually-charged, screechy students saying "like" or "right" like every other word like, or like sucking the face off each other right (and like get your feet off the chairs while you're at it right). No, that never used to bother me - goodness knows... I was a student once and talked utter tosh ten to the dozen whilst trying to impress some spotty youth who'd been marinated in Brut (or was it High Karate - I can't remember), so what happened?

 2.     Like when I started thinking: if the gusset of your tights is showing screechy student, then you are not wearing a skirt - you are wearing a fabric sample swatch (and if you had bought one just 10cm longer you wouldn't have to keep pulling it down as you walked along). No, I used to wear hot-pants (and with a bib too, and white lacy tights that were totally impractical - cutting edge of fashion me), so what happened? 

3.    And the hair... when did the hairstyle of the average teenage boy start to cause me such irritation? Just how many products do you have to put in those flowing locks to attract the screechy girls wearing the fabric swatch in the coffee shop? It's not so much "get your haircut you scruffy, little irk", it's more "you need to pin that fringe back out of your eyes or you will do damage to your sight" (plus you won't have to keep flicking it back or smoothing it down with your hand). Of course, I won't mention the home perm I used to have at this point - I know what happened in that instance.

4.    Like when I started to ask "where's the melody?" when listening to music or: "what are they saying? I can't understand a word". And let's not forget the: "for heaven's sake turn that down - I can't hear myself think" and of course, that old favourite: "that's too loud! You don't need those earphones in, 'cos even I can hear that from here. You'll damage your eardrums". I mean, I used to listen to the Monkees, David Cassidy, Adam & the Ants and Abba and that was proper music (wasn't it?), so what happened? 

5.    Like when I stopped reading Marie Claire, Vogue & Cosmopolitan and started to read the creative kitchenware catalogue from cover to cover and thought that a "poach pod" or a "bobble buster" (essential for removing bobbles from your knitwear) was really handy and of much more use than the "5 signs he's about to propose" or "how to dress for promotion" (whilst deciding if a Brazilian was really for me), so what happened?

6.    Like when I started thinking: "ooh, those shoes look comfortable......" 

I could go on. I blame the menopause, but then I blame that for most things: spots, weight gain, the need to redo my roots every 2 weeks, you name it, the menopause is usually lurking around looking guilty somewhere. I don't like the menopause - it reminds me of my mortality and shouts SO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR LIFE SO FAR, EH?    

NOT A LOT BY THE LOOKS OF IT. 

 

And I try to ignore it because I'm still only 17 years old in my head, even though the age spots on my hand say different.