Getting older is one thing, but growing up is another altogether | Rhik Samadder

Another year and another birthday ticked off the chart, but how do you know if you have crossed the elusive line into maturity?

If you're reading this, I have suddenly aged. It's my birthday on Christmas Eve. The split-flap display clacks obscenely over, to a once-unthinkable number. The knees ready themselves to explode. The howling between the ears picks up. Have you ever had a moment where you felt suddenly old? My most recent was during my daily diatribe against e-scooters and e-bikes. Can't stand 'em, flying down footpaths, headlights full bore like the cycloptic offspring of a Gorgon and Thomas the Tank Engine. In between prayers not to be mown down, I thought: Doesn't anybody pedal any more?" This spontaneous thought haunts me. But that wasn't the worst.

I heard myself describing an emerging grime artist as a young fella the other week. But that wasn't it either. Nor the memory of staring out of a window and announcing, It's really coming down now," prompting a friend present - greater in years than me - to mockingly describe me as an old head on old shoulders".