Goodbye Twenties, Hello Fatherhood – Week Three

It’s the final weekend of my twenties and I have decided to salute the last 10 years and bury them with full military honours.

This week, I’ve had time to reflect on the past 3650 days of my life. I imagined my future self sitting in a really comfortable chair, a tartan blanket placed over my legs to keep me warm and Countdown on the television. After I realised that this was quite a depressing image, I eventually concluded that this crinkly, aged version of me would probably look back at my twenties quite favourably.

I’ve had several amazing holidays and visited parts of the world I never thought I would. I’ve been to Cuba, The US and Cornwall. I’ve flown the family nest and become a home-owner. I’ve become a husband, I have a beautiful wife and I’m also a pet-owner. I am now university educated and to top it all as I enter my fourth decade, I will soon be a father.

So it begs the question what to do with the final weekend of my twenties? Apart from writing this of course.

I thought long and hard about this. Initially, I really wanted to go out with a bang, so to speak. I recalled memories of my youth, especially in my early twenties. I wondered if I could recreate some of those crazy shenanigans this weekend. It was as if my brain had the impulse to relive those memories one more time, before slippers and early nights become my staple diet. Whilst I mulled this over, I decided to make myself  a lovely brew, bring a nice selection of biscuits back to the living room and complete an infuriating sudoku to help me figure out what to do.

In the end, I decided that those days were behind me now and if I was going to try and reproduce memories from the past, they would be exactly that, reproductions. It probably wouldn’t feel the same, it would feel fake and staged. I realised that I should just take whatever the weekend happens to throw at me and take it in my stride.

So this will be my last blog in my third decade. Who knows what form my blog will take next week? Being one year older and having the number 3 at the beginning of my age might have a bearing on the content in my future editions.

Once I’d reached my twenties, I believed that I had officially become an adult, so now I’ve made it to thirty, does that make me an adult+, an extra wise adult that tackles the important issues in his blog, rather than compiling a list of mildly humorous kids names for self-gratification. (If you missed last weeks post, check it out it’s a doozy)

Maybe I should be talking about the future of the economy, the low interest rates we’ve had for the past couple of years or the state of my pension? Or should I talk about the latest unemployment figures and explore any correlation between that statistic and the London riots? I could write a whole piece about the price of milk and bread these days, or how public transport is so expensive compared to ‘my day’. I remember when you could jump on a train without paying and the worst punishment you would get from the conductor would be  a ruffling of the hair and being called a little scamp, not a fixed penalty fine. (I might be over egging it here, but you get my point.)

However, if I were to choose any of these topics as the lead item in my weekly scribblings, that would also not be me, I would yet again be forcing the issue. So, I’ve come to the conclusion that my age should not have any effect on anything I currently do or want to do in the future. I also shouldn’t try and recapture my youth or fit a mould that quite clearly doesn’t fit me.

So, I spent Saturday with my wonderful wife who treated me to a fantastic meal at one of our favourite restaurants and that suited me just fine. My final Sunday was spent with good company, barbecue food and beer. The afternoon was also a reminder of all the fun and happiness to come, as our friend’s nine month old boy entertained us immensely, slapping his mother in the face repeatedly and innocently grabbing boobs.

Anyway, enough of my prattling, time to update you with baby news.

My wife’s breasts have doubled in size overnight, so a trip to our local bra stockist is in order and she can’t get enough Gaviscon inside her to quell her terrible heartburn/indigestion. Stretchy elasticated jeans are now flavour of the month as all her other pairs are now far too tight to hold all that baby in. Welcome to the crazy world of pregnancy.

Until I’m thirty, goodnight.