Evidence that overflowing Tupperware cupboards aren't the only problem later life brings

Ben Cottam (@TheCottam) posted this statement on Twitter today: 'When you're growing up, no one ever tells you how much of your adult life will be spent pushing tumbling Tupperware into cupboards.'

I know, right? Why does no one say?

And what else does no one tell you about adult life, particularly later adult life?

I have made a list. 

1. That one day you will say, 'They'll freeze, dressed like that,' and 'Let's go home. It's nearly 10pm,' and think nothing of it.

2. That a summer will come when you will start the days dressed in cardigan and socks and only take them off when it's warm enough to leave the kitchen door open.

3. That police officers, teachers and nurses, rather than getting older, get younger, birthday by birthday, and that one day you will be burgled and then visited by a seven year old with a notebook and a helmet.

4. That the music in pubs and clubs becomes louder, brasher and more sweary, year on year, so that one evening you'll find you have leaned so close to your companion to hear their conversation that you have accidentally spat in their ear.

5. That the day will come when for you, too, a 'cup of tea' becomes a 'nice cup of tea' and you'll find a flowery cup appealing.

6. That you will, one Saturday, peer into a shoe shop window at the stilettos and platform shoes and make an immediate semantic link to back pain.

7. That the time comes when any week off work will involve at least two medical appointments.

8. That, sooner than you think, you will need to hold a spice jar against your actual nose in order to check whether it contains cumin.

9. That at some point you will start saying to small children, 'When I was your age,' and then need five minutes to calculate when that was.

10. That, increasingly, you will tolerate self-catering holiday cottages with flock wallpaper, pale green bed covers and decorative fringes around the lampshades as long as they have two toilets and a nearby Spar. 

11. That you will say 'Did you tape it?' to a young person one day and they will back away.

12. That you will, at some point, begin to welcome in dinner guests joyfully at 7pm but hate them with all your heart, soul, mind and strength when they're still on your sofa at 10.30pm.

13. That you will see someone wearing black jeans at a funeral one day and be sorely conflicted.

14. That you will eventually start watching TV programmes after which there are adverts for cruises and life insurance.

15. That you will, one winter evening, suddenly feel a draught around your knees.


To finish this blog post, here is the picture Pixabay gave me (Pixabay is where I get my copyright-free photographs) when I searched for 'draught'.

But there'll probably come a day when drought sets into my knees too. Nothing would surprise me.