Another year, another birthday.
As I creep slowly toward my mid-thirties I realise that I am aging quicker than I think. I have occassionally struck colleagues dumb with a pop culture reference from before they were born, or started a conversation with 'do you remember' to find that no one did. I often look at young women in the street and think 'did your mother let you go out dressed like that?' Last week called my phone a 'blueberry'.
Are these the actions of a vibrant young woman with her finger on the pulse? Am I suddenly out of touch with anyone under the age of twenty-five? I fear I am and yet I find the idea comforting.
I am a child of the eighties when there was no broadband streaming the answers into our homes. We did our homework the old fashioned way, by walking to the library, finding a book on the subject and paying 5p a sheet to photocopy it.
I bought CD singles at Woolworths, knowing by money counted toward something.
Today we have British Safety standards for side impact protection car seats for all children under thirteen. Back in my youth we had the wheel arches in the back of a Ford transit that you clung to with white knuckles while you avoided loose tools rolling at you on roundabouts.
We didn't have birthday parties at Krazy Kingdom, two hours of chicken nuggets and soft play. If you were lucky you got a lopsided homemade cake, a bag of chips and got to choose which video to rent that week.
We didn't have ethernet game consoles, wi-fi or apps. We had a Spectrum 64 with a tape deck and 'outside'. If you didn't want to play 'outside' you were given jobs to do like tidying your room, or topping and tailing a bucket of gooseberries. Heaven forbid you ever complained that you were bored. Being bored meant you were given a task that began with you putting your wellies on and fetching the wheelbarrow.
We had Sindy dolls, Star Wars figures and our imagination. When it rained (and it had to be bucketing otherwise you were given a cagoule and told 'it'll clear up') you had to play Connect Four on a towel on the kitchen table.
The highlight of the week was a Supermousse.
I look back on all these things with affection and hope that in some small degree I can bring to life these simple pleasures for my children. Sometimes we sit at the kitchen table and play dominoes, or play bagsy with the Argos catalogue not because it is all the entertainment we have, but because it's fun.
I am proud to be the age I am, otherwise look at what I might have missed.
