This is it.

Image from someecards.com

Last week, I finally started to feel like a grown up. And it wasn’t because I’d moved out of home (9 months ago), it wasn’t because I started nine to five life (13 months ago) and it wasn’t because I’d finally figured out how to wear bronzer without looking like an orang-utan (2 weeks ago. Shh.). No, last week the big event that woke me up to being an actual functioning adult was this: my Nectar card arrived.

Ok, let me preface this post by saying that this blog has not been sponsored by Sainsbury’s, or the Nectar card people (though guys, do feel free to throw some dollah or some free brioche my way). Nope, I’m writing it because getting my Nectar card genuinely made me realise I am actually an adult. A useful(ish) member of society. A real, working person. An grown up, capable of earning her own moolah, running a business, and (one day, hopefully) making other mini adults.

Woah*. Woah. It only seems like yesterday that I was playing Stingray in a muddy backgarden** , when my biggest fear about growing up was that I wouldn’t know how to pay bills. I guess I never quite envisaged the having-a-job bit of adult life, but still. Now I pay about ten different bills every month. By direct debit. On time.

I suppose being an adult has been creeping up on me for a little while now. Everything I’ve done up till now has just felt like the next natural step. There was never a moment where I lept off the barge labelled ‘childhood’ and landed on the iceflow of ‘young adulthood’. I don’t know what I was expecting. We’re not the sort of culture that parties at your first period, so there’s never been an opportune moment to say oh hai, you’re an adult now.

So yes, the Nectar card. As someone that now shops at Sainsbury’s, I get asked on a weekly basis if I have a Nectar card. I have always said no, and waved it off casually. A couple of weeks ago, the same happened but I suddenly thought, NO. I don’t have a Nectar card, but I could have one. And I asked the man how to get one. It had never occurred to me that I could actually have my own, probably because none of my family has ever had one. And it was this moment that made me realise, WOAH. I am totes my own person. I am totes an adult with her own independent means and financials. I am totes capable of having my own Nectar card without first asking for the advice or permission of an elder. YE GADS, I am going to take this Nectar card and I am going to RULE THE WORLD.

Ok. Perhaps a slight exaggeration. I mean I coped just fine with my Boots card, obtained aged 14 (thank you Boots, for keeping me in Lancôme). I have coped just fine with debit cards, credit cards, railcards, library cards, that little card that tells me my NI number. But I think the Nectar card, being brand new Fryer territory, had just eluded me. Shrouded in mystery, it remained something I’d never really considered getting. And yet now, as a normal (!) functioning human, I have claimed my right to go where no Fryer has ever gone before.

So I’m finally starting to realise that I’m an adult now. An adult that enjoys Disney movies and owns High School Musical socks, but an adult nonetheless. And it’s kind of marvellous. I’m not ready to have a house and 2.4 children, but I’m ready to poke my nose into the real world. Who knows, I might get a pony or a Vespa next.

~

*’woah’ is actually a common mispelling of the exclamation ‘whoa’, but I think that looks funny, so I’m sticking with my version.
**not a euphemism. Behave.

Hopeful little mini me.

When I was a kid, my biggest fear was that our house would be burgled. That at some point in the night, strangers would break into our house and take the TV and the stereo, before riding off into the sunset in a getaway car, driven by some man with a balaclava and black eyes. It wasn’t so much the stuff being taken that worried me; I came to realise later that it was the shift in power that scared me. This was probably the first sign of being a control freak, and I will forever blame my parents for not shoving me into therapy straight away to nip that in the bud.

Aside from neuroses and a pretty severe case of dramaticus queenicus, growing up has never really frightened me. I have always been a cheerleader for love – right from when I was a little girl I would ask every couple I knew how they met, how he proposed, did they or did they not imagine staying together forever (hey, I was a precocious eight year old). I always imagined I would grow up, meet my future husband at university, get married at 22 and be settled with kids by the time I hit my 24th year.

I am not sure where I factored in a high flying career, but the feminist in me reckons it was in there somewhere. I would then raise my children in a big house with dogs and cats and chickens (yes, chickens) and learn things like ceramics and knitting, while writing my bestselling novel in the evenings while the children were asleep. You can’t say my hopes and dreams weren’t thorough, if a little clichéd.

Now that I am in my final year of university, with my 21st birthday being a mere week away, I am starting to worry I may only have 6 months left in which to find the perfect husband in time to marry them, AND have 2.4 children before my time is up. If only it were that clear cut. No one warns you about recessions when you are a kid. No one tells you that you might never meet the perfect man or woman. No one tells you that nearly half of all marriages end in divorce these days. No one tells you that you can marry a girl instead of a boy (though to be fair to my parents, they have been suggesting I get a girlfriend since I was about 13). No one tells you you might have trouble conceiving and thus may never get your 2.4 children with the Volvo to match. Sorry Mum and Dad, but where is my happily ever after? I am still waiting for the fairy tale to start, let alone end with marriage and babies. If Sleeping Beauty could nab a husband in her sleep, why can’t I find mine in the harsh light of day??

My plan has clearly got a major flaw. Possibly something to do with life getting in the way. Like, seriously. Who knew I would have no time at all to go man hunting when I have a dissertation, a newspaper section and a social life to worry about? I will almost definitely continue to plan out every aspect of my life, but I am starting to realise that I am really not in control of most of it, and that scares the hell out of me. But I have started to realise that makes it a little bit more exciting – you never know who you are going to meet, what you are going to find, what opportunities might come your way. Similarly, you don’t know if you are going to crash your car, have a stroke, get your heart broken. If I could just console the control freak with the dreamer, maybe I would be alright.

Still, getting older and freaking out about it does have its perks. I get to stash away my Disney dreams for a few more months of shameless student life before I really have to worry. And if I haven’t gotten something sorted by graduation, there’s always a Masters…

Wish me luck. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.

Picture the scene. You are wearing your new sparkly party dress, heels you need painkillers to walk in and a smile that says, “I am me. I am incredible. I can take on the world.” You are chatting with your friends as you walk through the bar, you toss your hair back and laugh attractively… and just then some absolute scrotum of a man grabs your head and mashes his mouth up against yours. Delightful.

Now I am not one to deny I have had a fair few (insert shameful number here) cheeky snogs in my time, but none of them involved grabbing the face an innocent bloke plucked from obscurity by my vastly exaggerated sense of self worth. It seems the right cocktail of testosterone and trebles can convince any man that we are back in the Stone Age – and I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being dragged back to some guy’s cesspit by the hair.

Now before the menfolk start wailing, I am not suggesting women are any better. In fact we are just as bad. We totter around in heels and mini skirts, made up to the nines and drinking fruity little drinks, while eyeing up the talent (or lack thereof) on display. A few drinks later and we find ourselves grinding with some guy nicknamed Banana who does architecture and plays cricket on weekends. And you’re lucky if you get that much information.

A drink or two after that and you will be mashed up against Steve/Bob/Fred/your-best-friend-Helen, furiously making out as if your lives depended on it. For some people, the night ends here; for others, it goes further. Regardless of your personal taste for casual snogs/sex/fumbles-in-the-taxi-home etc, it has come to my attention (only now, after two years of uni) that romance didn’t die on its own – we killed it.

When we are little boys and girls, we are taught that when we grow up, we will find someone perfect, marry them when we turn 20 and then have a host of kiddiewinks and live happily ever after. How old are we when we realise that it’s really a load of bollocks? 10? 15? 20? Does romance even exist?

Isn’t this what it’s meant to look like?

It seems to me that we signed up for unicorns and ended up with horses – they get the job done but they can’t fly, they can’t heal wounds and they aren’t even remotely sparkly. We still got the horn but it’s not exactly what we were looking for either.

The beauty of fairy tales lies in the fact that they make children hopeful – imagine how disappointed they would be if they knew what we all get up to on a Wednesday night in Tiger Tiger. And there is nothing wrong with it, but in the harsh light of day, it makes me a tad jaded to think of all the strangers I have pulled – kisses which should be passionate end up as carnage of the mouth, chemistry is just a subject you did at GCSE and the stranger you are locking lips with probably has a hairy back. When did we start settling for hormones and stop thinking about love?

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but it sure would be nice to get to know a boy before I get to know his tonsils. I would be a hypocrite and a liar to say it’s not fun, but I can’t help but wonder, when do we settle down? When do we stop grabbing strangers in bars and start having conversations that end in a polite, gentle lip-lock at your front door? How am I going to find the right man if my mouth is otherwise engaged with some nobody who just happened to be there? If you have the answers, I am willing to hear them. Seriously.

So thanks Mum and Dad, you promised me Prince Charming and all I got was thirty three (unanswered) booty calls and saliva on my chin.