1. You REALLY appreciate a good candle.

Gone are the day’s when you would class candles and ‘smellies’ (yes you are even old enough to call bath sets smellies as well) as shit. Now, you actually ASK for them along with some comfy socks and some new garden gloves.

2. You save carrier bags.

Not only do you SAVE carrier bags, you differentiate between good and bad carrier bags. You are now sad enough to say things such as ‘oooh keep that its a good one’. If there were such an occasion like your first day at work, you would obviously take a Next or Marks and Spencers carrier bag, before eventually downgrading to Sainsburys and Asda, before finally, in one mad rush on a particularly tricky morning you have to accept defeat and take the Poundshop one.

3. Your idea of a perfect night out is staying sober and eating loads.

No longer are the days when you feel your ideal night out is getting absolutely mortal and having to pay a £50 taxi fine. Now, your idea of a great night is a nice meal out, which before you go to, you google the menu incessantly and are certain of your choice before you even step foot in the door.

4. You collect loyalty cards and vouchers.

When I was a child my ‘prized’ collection was keyrings. Now my prized collection is loyalty cards and vouchers. I’m, positive that voucher for a £99 Ford service will come in handy without a car. Also, my loyalty card for that café I went to once in Tunbridge Wells. You never know do you? If I return 6 times in my lifetime I will get a free coffee. Yes, a whole one! FREE. First time I got points at Nando’s I thought ‘ a free whole chicken? Jesus where will I put that?’

5. Your idea of heaven is getting home and getting your pyjamas on.

Or onesie. Or tracksuit bottoms. At the age you are now you cant think of anything worse than having to get dressed up and go somewhere. You would much rather sit on your sofa looking like a CCTV image in your grey Nike tracksuit watching films than put on shoes that are going to annihilate your feet and going out spending half your months mortgage money in a club that plays music you don’t understand.

6. You just do NOT understand Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber.

They must be doing something right seeing as they have so many followers on Twitter. Not that you know how to use Twitter, you read it in a paper. a hard copy one, not an online one. Today’s youth seem to idolize them but all you can see is two teenagers making terrible decisions and wasting lots of money on bail and outfits that look like dental floss.

7. You can remember life without smartphones.

Actually, you remember life with phones that were black and white. You had a BT cellnet, then you upgraded to a 3210 and got on to at LEAST level 30 of snake. When you did in fact, get a phone with internet you had to hold it above your head to try and get ‘GPRS’ signal just so you could load the ‘Orange homepage’.

8. If you go to your mates houses you take more bags than someone trekking the Himalayas.

There’s your drink, all the food you have bought, your nice juice for the morning, your vitamins, your overnight stuff, spare clothes for the kids, a first aid kit (just in case), your book, an umbrella, the straighteners, a cat, and your ‘indoor’ slippers.

9. You send out cards for everything.

Not just Birthdays and Thank You’s. You love a card so much now you have a collection of generic ones in the drawer. It’s good to be prepared in case someone’s son wins at football or if one of your friends gets rid of a particularly nasty bought of wind.

10. You no longer find gossip entertaining.

That woman down the street has kicked her husband out. Someone from school is pregnant and it may not be their boyfriends. So and So are sleeping together. Yawn. Unless the gossip comes from ‘Whats on TV’ and is about your beloved soaps, its really no fun any more. You don’t care whose got fat, knocked up or moved to Gibraltar. You want to know what Shabnams ‘dark secret’ is.

11. You do not understand todays fashion. At ALL.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought shorts were supposed to be longer than your fanny flaps?

12. You need a translator to understand some of the things younger relatives write on Facebook.

If there were a ‘slang translator’ app, you wouldn’t know how to get it because you can’t get the hang of setting up your debit card on ITunes. You just need to power through yourself and translate words such as ‘Sick’ (which doesn’t mean ill) and ‘Swag’ (still don’t know what swag means).