When you’re but a pip-squeak your thirties seem way off, like a hundred or so years off. You never think there will come a time you’ll spend your money on curtains and saucepans for pleasure, or that you’d rather stay in on a Saturday night chilling, than out on the tiles.
But as we’ve all found, the thirties comes for everyone – and you know what? They're actually GREAT.
Here are the 30 things that happen as soon as you say so long farewell to your twenties:
1. You think that everyone born in the 1990s must be about four years old.
2. And when you realise they’re actually in their twenties you feel ancient.
3. Instead of being offended, (“I am a sophisticated woman, what do you think, I look 17 or something?!”) being asked for ID is now a reason to strut out of the supermarket in pride.
4. (Sadly) you start to look at you biological clock as a ticking-time bomb.
5. When you walk into a shop with loud music you splutter, “It’s like a nightclub in here! I can’t hear myself think!”
6. You start to wonder if certain clothes are a bit ‘too young’ for you now. “Playsuits? Are they a young woman’s game? Am I mutton dressed as lamb?”
7. One glass of wine = a debilitating hangover that leaves you bedridden.
8. One doughnut = an instant stone of weight that takes up shop on your bum and stays there.
9. You think about the youthful you who thought you would have it all figured out by the time you’re 30 and you laugh. Hysterically.
10. You get more excited by that new range of non-stick frying pans on offer than you do about clothes and makeup.
11. You walk into a nightclub, say “I can’t do this” and walk out again.
12. You’ll become far more selective with who you spend your time with.
13. You’ll go to about 400 weddings a year.
14. You’ll realise your childhood movie crushes could potentially be grandparents now.
15. Words like arthritis, joint pain and diabetes will start to fill you with fear.
16. Your idea of a perfect Saturday night is vegging on the sofa watching Netflix in your pyjamas. Je ne regrette rien.
17. If you’re single your older relatives will not so tactfully ask WHY. Thanks Auntie Mona for insinuating I’m going to die alone.
18. You’ll start to identify with Bridget Jones far more than you ever thought you could.
19. You’ll cling to the phrase '30 is the new 20' like a life raft.
20. You’ll realise what’s important in life.
21. Fair play me! You’ll pat yourself on the back that you made it this far. Three decades is not to be sniffed at you know.
22. You’ll wonder how you can possibly be in your thirties when you still feel about eighteen.
23. There will be at least one piece of technology that will flummox you.
24. So you’ll ask a younger relative who will sigh and look at you like you’re a fossil.
25. You will use the phrase ‘back in the day’ with misty-eyed nostalgia.
26. You will start to recognise a pattern which you know will ultimately lead to you turning into your mother.
27. And you won’t mind in the slightest.
28. You make a beeline for the TK Maxx homeware section.
29. You appreciate your parents a whole lot more.
30. When you go out and say you’re going to have ‘just the one’, you DO have just the one. SHOCKER!
Can you relate to our list? What did you find happened to you as soon as you hit the big three-oh? Bridget Jones knickers? Frying pan love? Tell us!
