I mean, it’s Saturday night. I am young, free and single. I should be out painting the town red. Instead, for the third Saturday on the trot, I find myself at home, working. This is not a bad thing, exactly. I am happy here with my coffee, and my words, listening to weird post-rock and inventing strange new stories.

But I suddenly realised that I don’t know when the last time I went out and partied was. Some time around Christmas, I think. I mean, I’ve been out a couple of times, but no real town-painting has been on anyone’s agenda. A couple of fairly quiet drinks, at most. Fuck, I drank more while writing last weekend that I have while out and about since New Year.

I dunno, I’m 25 in a couple of months. But I look round and realise that I have more friends in Serious Relationships than single mates, that I find myself getting genuinely interested in the possibilities of interior decoration, that suddenly I work out and do yoga, and I wonder: when did I turn fucking middle aged? I’m sipping a fucking scotch-and-dry in the comfort of my own home at ten o’clock on a Saturday night, for Christ’s sake! I should be drinking improbable quantites of Jack Daniels and stumbling home drunk at 2 am. But no, the best social invite it seems I can muster is a quiet pizza in Soho with a couple of friends, which to be honest, I didn’t fancy.

And the corollary to all this: why, if even my younger friends are suddenly leading Commited and Grown Up lives, do I still feel that I’ve hardly fucking started? Am I just in denial? Am I going to slowly slide downhill over the next half-decade and turn into one of those sad and frightening 30 year olds that all the kids laugh at for not knowing that they are old and past it?

Oh, and just to round off this “Alasdair is becoming aged and bewildered” diatribe, here’s a sad anecdote about the younger generation, just so I’ve covered all the bases: apparently my brother’s friends consider me a heavy drinker, because, when I visited him at University, I drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels, and was drunk but by no means out of it. This is, reportedly, a Feat Of Alcoholic Prowess amongst 20 year olds.

I swear, kids today…