Emma Cowing: ‘Actresses and pop stars you could have sworn were the same age as you turn into timelords’

‘SO, WHAT age are you then?” a colleague asked when I told him it had been my birthday the previous day. I lowered my voice. “Thirty schmurfleswarnhoggle,” I replied. “Ah,” he said, conspiratorially. “You’ve reached that age.”

It happens to the best of us, I understand. One day we’re toddling along, happy to tell all and sundry what age we are and what year we were born, and then suddenly: BAM. You say the word “thirty” and find yourself so terrified of the following figure it gets stuck somewhere at the back of your throat and comes out a mumbled “schmurfleswarnhoggle”.

From then on, of course, you’re stuck with it. Once the dreaded age arrives, it looms over you like Mike Tindall in a Queenstown bar. Your date of birth is no longer something to be celebrated, but a figure you hold your thumb over when standing in the passport queue.

I should have known I’d reached thirty schmurfleswarnhoggle when I surveyed my diary for the birthday in question. “2pm – mortgage advisor” it read, thrillingly. “4pm – lawyer’s office”. The celebrations were brought to a thunderous conclusion with the instruction to “do weekly shop”. I’ve seen more exciting episodes of Songs Of Praise.

It is also the age when actresses and pop stars whom you could have sworn were the same age as you suddenly turn into timelords. That woman who was getting pregnant in Neighbours when you were barely in your teens is celebrating her 27th. The Hollywood actress who won her first Oscar when you were still at school is “a mum of two at 32”.

I was impressed last year when I stumbled across an interview with a school contemporary who has since had a modicum of success in the acting world. She was described as being “24 years old”. Impressive, given that she was older than I was. Perhaps she was just terribly advanced for her age.

It is depressing, of course, that after a certain age women feel they must lie about their age in order to – well, what? Compete with younger talent? Pretend they never get old? I’m not quite sure. But lie about it we do, as if getting older were something to feel guilty about and hide away.

The only way you ever really leave your thirty schmurfleswarnhoggle years is if you end up spectacularly old. By which I mean Queen Mother old. It is a hallmark of those whose age can be marked out in a vast array of Roman numerals that they are inordinately proud of their age, blasting it out at any opportunity in a shameless attempt to steal the limelight from anyone in the room younger than them – usually everyone.

The seriously old are seriously pleased with themselves, and why shouldn’t they be? They’ve struggled womanfully – and they are usually women, most of the men having dropped out of the race by this point – through the decades and emerged on the other side ancient and unbowed.

It is something to aspire to. And I will, one day. First, just let me get used to being thirty schmurfleswarnhoggle.