Sorry, but...warnings to the youngsters among us

You will get old knees. Nobody has invented a knee-lift that I know of. The fat above your knees will push your knee skin down a bit, there'll be a little crease. Your knees will look crap in shorts.

It's all downhill from your first love. Get it over with and marry them. Stop thinking there's always something better around the corner.

Sorry but...

...You'll consider a trip to the big Tesco/Sainsburys/[insert supermarket of choice] a day out. A stop at the shop's cafe is a special treat.

You do start to get more tired easily. And if you are very sporty, you will find that there are some things you used to be able to do, that you can no longer do.

You will have people your age that you know, maybe even love, die.

Pension contributions and any savings if you are not very well paid, are a gamble. You may find yourself better off, or worse off, depending on what future Governments do. Ignore this if you are well paid.

You will have a conversation with a young person about a song they now call an "old school mash up" where they mix old and new songs on some fancy laptop programme.

You'll realise the "old song" is one you very clearly remember dancing to in Ayia Napa. You'll start to say that the song isn't old, it was only a couple of years ago. Then you'll realise it was 15 years ago and this young person wasn't even born.

Then the young person will say they thought UK garage was around at the same time as New Romantics and you'll die a little bit inside.

...there will come a time when you have spots and wrinkles at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive.

I was just complaining to my friend about this very thing!

... You wont spend hours in Costa during maternity leave while DS sleeps soundly in his buggy

... You wont give a damn whether your undies match, as long as they are comfortable

... An uninterrupted bath will become the height of extravagance

... Spending all day Sunday with a banging head will put you off excessive drinking

... The sensible shoes your mother forced you to wear as a kid will one day look welcoming and errrr sensible.

Your guilt trip starts with your first contraction......

You'll bump into an ex boyfriend from your teenage years. You probably won't recognise him at first. Then the penny will drop and you'll realise that the tall, dark, handsome man with whom you had wild sex in various places is now a chubby, middle-aged, slightly balding bloke with nasal hairs and bad shoes.

You'll be quite flattered that he still recognised you though

You will move from listening to radio 1 to radio 2 (infact occasionally radio 3 or 4 when Chris Evans is just too cheerful)

This thread has made me laugh and cry at the same time. So many truths.

You will consider how you are going to get out of a slouchy chair or beanbag before you sit down. You will choose a high backed armchair instead.

they could be surgical, tomato-related, or both.

Your new "toy" is a microfiber mop which is so good you've used it twice daily since buying it. And constantly told your OH how good it is.

Reading over your glasses.
Making an oof noise when getting up.

Nice cup of tea.

Going upstairs and forgetting why.
Going downstairs and remembering why you went up.
Going straight back up and forgetting again.
Sitting down because the constant stair climbing has puffed you out.

Looking in the mirror and seeing the hair on your face is darker than the hair on your head. Keeping tweezers with you at all times.

Having a bag with a pocket containing paper hankies, paracetamol, anti-diarrhoea tablets, constipation tablets, insect bite cream, hand cream and mints. Oh yes. I've totally bypassed my mother and am channelling my Great-Granny.

I identify with so many of these! A year ago my Mum began to gleefully describe me as middle-aged; I got the hump and suggested it's an attitude rather than a number, but she persisted that according to statistical and chronological calculations I am in fact middle-aged. I am learning to embrace it.

Sorry but... You will chat with colleagues about news events (eg the death of Diana) with the assumption that they remember the day, only to have it pointed out they were a toddler at the time.

Sorry but... You will go out for your Xmas do and afterwards go on to a nightclub - having very much got the t-shirt, worn it to death and discarded it - only to be told by a 21 year old the next day that "you did really well"

Sorry but...

It is a good idea to pay pension contributions

You look at a very on trend dress in a 'higher end' high street shop and are appalled to see it costs £85 when it looks so poorly made.

The wiry white eyebrows drive me nuts are frustrating, but this stuff works well, and their angled brush is excellent too.

Sorry but...

One day you'll realise that men are not interested in you for your opinions, your personality or anything other than whether they want to fuck you or not. And they never were.

One day you will decide you have to have a specific picnic blanket for its waterproof layer

Comfort starts to become an increasing priority for footwear. Some nice inexpensive wide fitting shoes in M&S this season.

You've got a head start in a gym class when the instructor asks you to run on the spot with high knees so they reach your chest. I'm the oldest in the kettlebells class and it makes me smile every time!

whoknows...yes it's presbyopia, aka the need for reading specs

I have a nightmare with glasses, also very shortsighted, so with glasses on distance is good, near is iffy, BUT I can whip off my specs and hold stuff really close and see it well..i only ever do fancy eyelinery malarkey BEFORE putting lenses in or there is no chance of anything other than a panda effect.

On the other hand with my lenses in, distance is still good, but I have to put reading specs on to see close stuff, but everything swooshes and looms about me horribly if I wander about with them on

I get in such a tizz about whipping my glasses on and off, put myself n a panic as I was driving with my glasses on, mere seconds away from whipping them off until I realised it was the normal specs and not the reading specs. FFS!

It's like a travelling opticians when I go on holiday, specs, spare specs, reading specs, spare reading specs, contacts, spare contacts, plain sunnies, reading sunnies, gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!

Is the mirror thing because of long-sightedness? I'm extremely short sighted and can't put make-up on without my contact lenses in but magnifying mirrors don't help with that at all.