SADIE NINE: OMG I’m halfway to 70...and by my reckoning I’ve only got a few blinks left

I will soon turn 35.

I don’t normally give birthdays a great deal of forethought.

I never plan anything much, except a beer or two with a few mates. So perhaps I dreamed about birthdays last night, because this morning I woke up abruptly with the thunderous thought “I AM HALFWAY TO 70!!!”

It’s not the best way I’ve woken up. I prefer it when I wake up slowly with that sort of “I don't even have to move my toes if I don't want to, I have forever.” feeling.

Which almost never happens, actually, so I’m going wrong somewhere. But this morning it was like a freight train of age awareness whooshing though.

Halfway to seventy. Jesus H Macy.

Sometimes my life seems so long. I suppose because as a length of time, I have nothing to compare it to, so it’s the longest example of time I’ve got to hand – and sometimes it seems like a flash. Like I have woken from a dream to find myself here, aged 35, when just a moment ago I was 13 and feeling really grown up buying a lip balm in Body Shop.

Now I ammore likely to stare at my lips and haveamirror debate about whether I would ever have collagen refills. I don’t think I would. But maybe I’ll feel differently at 45. WHICH IS HALFWAY TO 90. WOULD SOMEONE STOP TIME AND BREAK ALL THE MATHS, PLEASE.

It’s like we are Russian dolls of different ages frozen on the inside.

I will always be ten, and I will always be all the ages I was from 1990 to 1998. They ruled. And I will always be 23. That did not rule but a sad thing stuckme there, like a fly with its legs in bubblegum. A family friend once said to me, when I turned 16 – “Blink and you'll be 30.” I did blink and I was 30. And half a blink later and I’m nearly 35.

You can’t help but do a bit of a rundown of what you’ve done so far to warrant suddenly being so grown up.

I thought of boys I’ve liked, men I’ve loved. I thought of old friends and new. I thought of my mumand sister, and the different stages of beauty they have reached as each year has passed. I thought of all the career things I’ve done, the little diversions and new starts and unexpected successes and setbacks and decisions I’ve made. The different places I’ve lived. The different haircuts, the different shoes. The countries I’ve been to, the pubs, the meals, the plays, the therapy, the parks. I remembered with a loud laugh that I was evenmarried.

Proposed to very publicly, married soon after, then remembered how I realised I should never have been married in the first place, and then divorced.

How silly. How grown up. I have been sat in an interviewwith a husband, with a lady vetting us to see if we were suitable to adopt a child. She said we were. I shudder to think of where that road might have led. I thought of my dog. Now eight. I remember holding him in one hand.

I ran a little list of it all in my head, and found there is really not much I would change at all. Which pleased me, and settled the panic.

Looking at our lives and not wanting to change much is a big thing to achieve. Here’s to the next 35 years rushing by.

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