Alice Wyllie: Growing up is hard to do

AS A bairn, I always assumed that one day, in the distant future, I would wake up feeling like a Proper Grown-Up.

It would, I imagined, be an instantaneous, irreversible change, like the split second, after what seems like hours of beating, when your cream turns into butter.

At this point, I lamented, I would be forced to stop putting my feet up on the cinema seats in front of me. I'd probably have to open an ISA and start discussing property prices.

Until last week, that moment was yet to announce itself. Approaching my 27th year, I was surprised it hadn't come sooner.

It didn't happen when I signed up for a mortgage or when I first sent back corked wine in a restaurant. It didn't happen when I haggled on a quote from a tradesman, when I first turned left when stepping aboard a plane or when I perfected my first risotto.

No, it happened last weekend when I took delivery of my very first car. Suddenly, in the space of a week, I've become a person who waves to men in white vans in acknowledgement when they give way to me, like it's the most normal thing in the world.

I walk around nonchalantly swinging my car keys from my index finger. I check my blind spot. I'm responsible for manoeuvring a ton of metal around the streets of Edinburgh.

Never mind that in one short week I've driven over the top of a roundabout and left the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. More to the point, I've become someone who frets about Finding Cheaper Car Insurance. I'm a Proper Adult and there's nothing anyone can say to prove otherwise.

One would imagine that, since one's first car can arrive as early as one's 17th birthday, something like becoming a homeowner might feel like more of a grown-up milestone. But no, the moment I realised I had lived in my flat for a full six months without having bothered to insure it put paid to that notion.

Somehow being given the combined responsibility of avoiding running over/into my fellow man and knowing how to top up my wiper fluid has turned out to be my final push into adulthood.

And in this last week it has spurred me on to sample a number of other 'adult' activities. I have made my own bread. I have polished the brasses on my front door.

But, like trying to turn that butter back into cream, I wonder if there's any going back. I recently took an online quiz to determine my 'mental age'. It deemed me to be 36, in part because when asked what would be a bigger concern when throwing a party, I picked "do I have enough chairs?" over "where can I find the cheapest vodka?"

Standing at my kitchen window, looking out at my new car while enjoying a slice of my home-baked bread, slathered in jam bought at the farmers' market, I saw, not my youth exactly, but my youthful recklessness slipping away.

There was only one thing for it. I jumped in my new car, drove to the cinema and proudly put my feet up on the seat in front of me. The disapproving tut from the woman sitting behind me only served to make my night.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 3 April, 2011