Despite what Olay, Loreal and the rest claim in their adverts, there is no cream, treatment or procedure that can halt the inevitable passage of time. You can inject refined disease into your face and have bits ‘tightened’ or sucked out of you but eventually we will all get old and die. How gracefully you go about this process is, of course, a completely different matter.

As you grow older, certain things that were once the punchlines to jokes you told become a reality and all the face-lifts and botox injections in the world can do nothing to stop them.

Things such as:

Ridiculous injuries
If you told the teenage me that in years to come a simple cough could result in serious injury and time off work, I would have told you to fuck off. Some of the younger folk reading this are probably thinking exactly that right now. But, alas young bendy people, it is true. As you grow older, a mis-timed sneeze, cough or sudden movement has the potential to cripple you for weeks through torn muscles, slipped discs, trapped nerves and all sorts of other delightful ailments.

You don’t even need to exert yourself in any way; you can also injure yourself sleeping. Yep, the world is a cruel, cruel place.

Gruesome hangovers
Once upon a time, it was not unheard of for me to go out on the piss, get up the next day, go to work and then get back on the piss again. This would be repeated most days of each week. The mere thought of doing that now makes me feel a bit sick.

Nowadays, I pretty much have to clear my schedule for the next day if I want to get shit-faced, which I will admit, is rather depressing… But once you hit your mid-twenties, it is viable to expect a two day recovery period for every evening of heavy drinking you partake in.

Want proof? Check your Facebook newsfeed on a Saturday morning. I bet every person that moans about being hungover in their status update is over twenty-five years old. If you don’t have any friends that are over twenty-five, then take heed and make the most of the time you have.

Diminishing cultural awareness
When you were in your teens, even if you didn’t get involved, you were still aware of any cultural phenomenons that were occurring around you. You knew what was popular on commercial radio and what was actually popular with people who have taste (yeah, I said it). I remember being very much involved in Drum n Bass music/culture around the turn of the century… Fuck knows what’s going on with it now…

The older you get, the more likely it is that entire cultural movements will pass you by. I bet my old man wouldn’t know what Lady Gaga was if she fell on him. Yes, you will pick up on certain things through cultural osmosis (think back to Biology class- I recall something to do with potatoes) but these days, due to the speed that information is shared globally, by the time you have caught up, that shit will be old hat.

Eastenders picking up on ‘jog-on’ a few years ago is a good example. The term became popular among angry young men via the classic work of cinema ‘Football Factory’ (Danny Dyer’s in it, so it must be good…). By the time the ‘Stenders writers became aware of its existence, the only people in Britain still saying it were your parents.

Got a smartphone? Does it confuse you sometimes? I said, DOES IT CONFUSE YOU SOMETIMES, DEAR?

I think I’ve proven my point.