My recent 39th birthday found me ruminating on age and how my perspective has changed greatly over the past 10 years.

For example, I used to think that crowns were only for royalty, until my gnashers started giving up on me.

There’s nothing more humbling than standing outside your dental surgery first thing in the morning with a tooth in your pocket and begging for an appointment to glue it back in before work.

Gone are the days of looking around when a situation calls for a grown-up, which still found me in my twenties scanning for an “adultier adult” than myself.

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I’ve officially reached that age when I see people I went to school with and think “Wow, they’ve got old-looking”, while mistakenly believing I look the same as I always have.

It’s difficult to acknowledge that my days of playing hide and seek are over; not because I’m too mature to play with the kids, but I’ve been informed by my own offspring that my joints are so noisy when I move, it sounds as though I’m “holding a clickety set of maracas” each time I take the stairs.

I’ve always encouraged my boys in........

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