The Politics of Adulthood

So there I am, trundling along in daddy's Saab, in the middle of bumble-fuck-nowhere, picturesque churches and Georgian dwellings galore, wearing an ACTUAL Alice band. With my worn jeans, old riding boots, corduroy jacket and pearl earrings I looked a fat Kate Middleton. And honestly, as I handed my best friend Carla a bottle of something and sparked up a Marlboro Light, then cooed over the pear-cut diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand I just had this overwhelmingly debilitating WAM! BAM! feeling of SHIT. IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE. 

I felt like I needed to get an 18 year old between my thighs just to calm myself down. 

You see, I suddenly realised that I might be on the cusp of becoming an adult. And an adult dressed as a Tory at an Election Night Party at that. AN ELECTION NIGHT PARTY. If that isn't bloody grown-up then I may as well buy a Volvo, get a Labrador and head off to God's waiting room right now.  I think it's called Harrogate. 

I know, I know. You can stop laughing now. Me, a grown-up. But it's happening. I can feel it.

It could have something to with the fact that I've started taking multi-vitamin tablets every morning. Maybe that is to blame. That seems like a rather grown-up thing to do. Or maybe it's how, after the Herpes scare, I realise how important it is to nearly always make the boy wear a condom, especially if you only met him that night and don't yet know his name. Damned crabs. Or maybe it's because I have friends who are actually starting to (GULP!) "settle down" and have careers and fiancees and names and possible school choices for their as yet unborn children. Seriously.

I had been informed by Carla's fiancee (FIANCEE, internet!) via email that lots had been drawn, and that I was to observe the dress code of a Tory for the evening. Which is how I came to find myself in the situation whereby to everybody I met that night I had to brightly and forcefully declare, "I don't dress like this in real life. I'm the token Tory. Honestly." The irony being that there was a phase in my late teens where it was ALL about the pashmina and flippy hair. I'm so ashamed. It never occurred to me until after the party that as George, the FIANCEE, is a trainee lawyer, all of his invited friends were of course Lawyers and thus in their circles all my outfit was missing was a dead fox around the neck. I wondered why, at the time, they looked so confused by my protests.  For them there IS no other style.

I was also informed that I would be expected to give a short speech exemplifying the views of 'my' party so that we could hold our own election for the selection of a Prime Minister of Carla and George's flat. I wrote my speech in ten minutes, and used an extended metaphor whereby I compared the Labour party to Joseph Fritzel: Labour are like the Joseph Fritzel to the abused, over-sexualised, under-nourished captive daughter that is out country after 13 years locked in the underground basesment of their rule... I'm not really sure what my point was but everybody laughed- I suppose every party needs a court jester and as the vegeatarian, Green-Party supporting 'writer' in a room full of Lawyer I was it. Sort of the the child's 'turn' at a grown-up party. Needs must.

But as a grown-up I'm not sure where else there is to go from here. I didn't have a single drink all night because I was driving, and I took all my make-up off properly before I went to bed even though it was 2 a.m. when by rights 2 a.m. is when a night should just be getting REALLY good, if you know what I mean, and I should be waking up smeared in my own lipstick and slobber with the hangover from hell. I couldn't bring myself to make an Ovaltine, but if I'm honest I did feel a chill and so slept with my electric blanket on. Which makes me approximately 57. 

And then of course bloody Gordon Brown has to go and resign this week, doesn't he, bringing cutie-pie David Miliband into the picture and then suddenly I have a Labour MP as my pin-up.

The worry of it all is aging me. And that's all I need.