Emma Cowing: A cause for celebration

Published on Sunday 26 September 2010 13:51

FUNNY age, 33. It's a bingo number of a birthday, one of those years where, if someone asks you "is it a big one?", there's a dreadful moment where you look at them and they look at you, and no one knows whether a compliment or an insult has been delivered.

My birthday was lovely, though. Sunday afternoon in a local pub with a crowd of friends and some good red wine, with the promise of another bottle and some food back at the house for those not working first thing the next morning.

It was one of those unexpected good times, not a huge party that was planned with military precision months in advance, just a raggle-tag get-together that, despite the hour and despite the weather, somehow just works. It seemed perfect, really, for 33.

One of the better things I've found about getting older (no, wait, come back) is that you don't have to pretend anymore, with birthday parties, or anything else for that matter. No longer must one indulge in a complex masquerade designed to make the world believe you actually enjoy early French cinema, or Mongolian nose music, or the views of that insufferable character who used to be in Blur and now makes expensive cheese.

Instead, ageing means you don't have to give a damn anymore. By which I don't mean pulling on a muu muu, throwing out the moisturiser and never plucking your eyebrows again. I'm talking about the ephemera, the things you let clutter up your younger life because you think they make you look cool, or more attractive, whether it's reading the latest Jonathan Safran Foer novel even though you couldn't get through the first one, or a dogged insistence that, yes, you really do want to go to that incredibly hip new cocktail bar in town and in no way want to stay at home in your furry slippers watching the new season of Mad Men.

And, of course, it's also about embracing the things you do like too. If, like Eliot's Prufrock, I grow old, and wear my Capri trousers rolled, then I shall also like early German cinema, and Mongolian ear music, and Gorrilaz (not the new album though, it's rubbish). And I shall indulge in these things not only in private but in public too, where other people can see me and – heaven forfend – judge me on it too.

On my mantelpiece my birthday cards now proudly sit, and I can't help but notice that over half of them feature either cats or shoes. Two, brilliantly, star both. Now, I own a cat, and I own a lot of shoes, and sometimes I tell people how much I love them. As a definition of maturity, I'll take it.

Like any age-related trait, however, there is always the danger of sliding headlong into eccentricity. The day I receive a pair of shoes with cats on them as a present is the day I probably need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

• This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on September 26, 2010