Every now and then I am struck by the realisation that, like everyone else on the planet, I am getting older.

I can’t believe it either. These little epiphanies are like tiny daggers to my creaky heart, because I checked with my brain, and it thinks I’m still 28.

So what are these signs? Well, last weekend, I spotted two young girls heading out for the night and I started muttering to myself about their lack of jackets. When exactly did I start caring about whether the youth of today are going to be cold when they’re on their way to the pub? I don’t know. But once you’ve considered throwing a cardigan out of a car window at a bemused stranger, there is no going back, is there?

The obvious name for these is grey flags — the irrefutable evidence that you are no longer young and cool. Like when you realise that you’re in the process of appreciating a really good peg. I was hanging the washing out the other day and I started to notice that some of my pegs were better than others. There’s quite a difference between good ones and ordinary ones, let me tell you. You want a good weight in the hand, a strong spring mechanism, a soft grip on your clothes and oh my God, I just aged 15 years.

See how quickly it happens?

Another grey flag is how quickly you start to get irritated by very minor things. Like people being too slow at the self-checkout in the supermarket. Too many people seem surprised that the have to pay at the end and spend way too long remembering how to scan a credit card. I’ll know I’ve really aged when I get so sick of it that I go back to queuing for the manned checkout. Any day now.

And don’t get me started on people at airports who behave like they have never seen a security or passport checkpoint in their life. Yes, you need to have your passport out. Yes, you have to take your huge metal belt buckle off. Yes, you have to take that massive bunch of keys out of your pocket. No, you can’t keep that pair of very pointy scissors, no matter how much you complain about it. It’s been this way for a while now. And even if you haven’t travelled for a while, there are literally signs everywhere. C’mon people.

Oh, and what about the greyest flag of all? Yes, gardening.

I’ll admit that this one has not yet completely unfurled around me, but I have found myself paying more attention than usual to the occasional gardening Instagram reel that turns up in my feed. I’m now aware that I need to significantly improve my soil if I want to grow anything in my backyard, and that was not a realisation I had ever come to before.

Previously, I would drop a comical amount of money at a nursery and bring home a bunch of very healthy plants, pop them into the water repellent sand in the garden beds along my fence and hope for the best. The best hasn’t happened so far. And now I’m starting to consider buying manure. Just considering, mind you. There is still a long way to go before I can consider myself an actual gardener, but an interest is germinating. And that’s terrifying (and I’m not talking about the pun).

Then there are the conversations you accidentally find yourself having. I recently spent a good 10 minutes discussing the relative merits of different vacuum cleaners with genuine enthusiasm. Not ironically. Not because I was trapped. I actually wanted to know which one had the better battery life and whether it coped with (substantial) pet hair. There was a time when conversations revolved around boxed wine cooler and the resulting questionable life choices. Now I’m impressed by cordless technology and unusually excited if the supermarket has half-price dishwasher tablets. Somewhere along the line, practical became interesting, and frankly, that’s a little confronting.

Of course, there’s still hope for me. I know who Sabrina Carpenter is and I happily scroll TikTok and I recently bought some gochujang. Sure, the grey flags might be fluttering, but they’re still at a bit of a distance. With the help of about 8kg of quality Korean skincare that I brought back from my trip to Seoul, I might be able to stave off old age for a bit longer yet.