On being old.

It suddenly dawned on me this afternoon, whilst cursing a particularly lethargic pensioner who was paying for the privilege of their bus journey with threepenny bits, that, in exactly one week's time, I will officially be over the hill. Far away. Past it. Old. Oh sure, twenty six might not be the end of the line; hopefully far from it, in fact, but nonetheless, very soon, I will be able to proudly claim that I am over a quarter of a century in age. And, more importantly, I will no longer be able to use my Young Person's Railcard. At 26, the British rail service no longer considers you to be 'young'. The next one available is the 'OAP Railcard'. Fuck.

This is nothing short of pant-wettingly frightening. How did I manage to survive this long without realising that time was going so gosh darn bleeding fast? Where did my university years go? What happened to my youth? How did I so quickly leave my teens behind and start on the road to, oh my God I daren't type it, thirty? It feels like only minutes ago since I was filling in UCAS applications and having a Dawson's Creek-influenced cod-psychoanalytic 'therapy' session on the Fire Exit staircase in my secondary school's Sixth Form block. Now I'm thinking about 'work in the morning', attending friends' weddings and, heavens above, moving out. Yes, in 2009, I am dead set on leaving the home I've known for the better part of the last twenty five years and making it on my own. With two others. Who aren't my parents. But still, big change. Big mature change. Big adult change. Big old change. Eeeep.

And as if these very 'grown up' features of my private life aren't enough to scare the living daylights out of me, there's the ever-increasing awareness of my development into a grumpy old codger to worry about too. Of late, I have begun to realise that I'm getting ever more impatient with the world. People? I can't bloody stand them. Well, most of them. Well, the ones that get in my way when I'm at the top of an escalator in a jam-packed shopping centre, insisting on standing stock still and staring blankly into space, as if rendered temporarily comatose by some extra-terrestrial laser beam of lethargy. Yeah, that's right, just block everyone's access love, that'll make you some friends. Or how about the families of about seven or eight that insist on walking side by side in a line, practically holding hands, thereby taking up the entire walking space, and then have the temerity to move at a pace that would embarrass a snail? Would it really kill you fuckers to collect together in a group, say, with two or three people side by side, in front of and behind the others, so that all of us other shoppers (yes, believe it or not, they do exist) could get by? I don't know about you, but I always seem to be in a mad dash to get to where I need to be when shopping; my time is precious and I don't need to contend with gormless buffoons loitering around with their tongues lolling out of their mouths in the middle of the flaming high street. Snap out of it and get out of my fucking way, you twit. That's what I really want to say. But I don't. Instead, I just huff a bit, perhaps let out a self-satisfying tut and weave my way around the offending party after a minute or so of excessive irritation.

These are not good signs. Moaning is starting to become second nature. People are starting to become the enemy, not the swathes upon swathes of potential friends that I used to view them as (um... maybe). This is all very Grumpy Old Men. And it's worrying; how long before I start bitching about the price of milk or, Christ in a bathtub, whining about how 'music just isn't what used to be'? All those things I swore I'd never do when I was young, free and innocent. They're all on the horizon, it seems. Of course, I could chalk all of the above up to inherent Christmas cynicism; I've never been a huge fan of 'the Holiday season' as, more than anything, I find it to be a rather irritating exercise in mass panic and thrift spending that I begrudge, but somehow ultimately do, get caught up in. Maybe my excessive moaning and groaning of late is just down to that. Yeah. That's got to be it. I'm not really that old yet... twenty six is still a darn sight younger than a great chunk of the population, that's for sure. And I still have my health, relatively speaking... well, apart from the crown I'm having to have to replace one of my damaged teeth, which is going to cost me £198. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY EIGHT FUCKING POUNDS, THAT'S MORE THAN A LOT OF PEOPLE EARN IN A WEEK AND £198 MORE THAN IT WOULD COST ME TO GET MY FUCKING ARM AMPUTATED YOU MONEY-GRABBING BASTAR......

Oh dear.