Nearly took myself off to the fair today. I was driving home from town after dropping my son at his friend’s house, when I saw a sign advertising a funfair nearby. For some reason it took me right back to when I was seventeen, and a group of us from Sixth Form went to the funfair one evening. It was an amazing night, and I’ve never forgotten it. Nothing major happened, it was just good fun with good friends. And we were seventeen. Suddenly what I wanted most in the world – no, needed, most in the world – was to be riding on the chairoplanes with Rhinestone Cowboy playing really loudly. And I needed to be seventeen again. I cried.
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Well I’m sure most of you are now thinking that’s a bit pathetic. Get over yourself – you’re not a teenager any more, it happens to everyone. And fair enough. I would agree with you, but after the strange week I’ve just had, I can only assume it’s some sort of reaction.
On Monday it was our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Quite an achievement, and certainly something to be proud of. But also something that invariably makes one feel old! Then, just two days later, on Wednesday, our youngest child turned eighteen. Technically, I now have no children. They are both adults. That’s a very scary and rather sad thought. So by Thursday I was feeling pretty churned up and depressed.
Add to that the fact that I realised on my last birthday that I am almost certainly more than half way through my life, (although I have always intended to live forever), and you pretty much have the perfect storm. In my head I’m still nineteen. I still haven’t really got going with life, and yet here I am – my children are grown-up (technically), I have a baby granddaughter and I probably should be behaving like an adult.
Well that ain’t gonna happen, so I shall just get on with my mid-life crisis and see what happens next.