25/6

Nobody warns you, when you're 6 and dreaming of your future, that when you're 25 that future will still feel just as far away.

You love your life, but there's another life just out of reach which where you'll be a proper adult. You're always waiting?

I will have a small house with lots of wooden furniture. I will have matching cutlery with a few unaccounted for teaspoons that appear to have been smuggled into the house. We will have to buy twice as many teaspoons as anything else because they always seem to disappear. The bathroom will resolutely not be blue or nautical in any way as a nod to the revolution in my head.

I'll stop alternately growing out and cutting off my hair one day when I am old enough to either not care or finally admit that I am destined for a bob. Mascara will be the one piece of make up I still wear even though no one seems to notice. I'll have a freestanding fridge.

My children will bring home Each Peach Pear Plum and I will surprise them by still knowing all the words. I'll still not make crumble as frequently as I intend to. I'll have enough plug sockets for the number of electrical items in any given room in my house. I'll buy coasters.

My front door will be red and I'll paint it myself when it gets chipped. There'll be somewhere near my house where I go when I want to feel like a Bronte character without anyone noticing and judging me. I might cry there sometimes. I will keep all the first coats of my babies.

I'll tut at American television and pretend to do the crossword while I watch it. I'll phone my mum to tell her about deals in the supermarket that she probably won't buy but it gives me something to talk to her about. My sisters will still think I'm irresponsible and a little tiresome.

I'll write letters to my brother's wife even though I don't like her and will never understand what he sees in her. She'll write back to me and we'll bitch about the way the other one is bringing up their kids. When we're drunk we'll probably get on really well.

I'll do things that I hated my parents doing... like asking, "Who's mean Alice?" when they ask "Can me and Alice go out and play?" I shall rather enjoy feigning ignorance at their frustration at my pedantry. They'll thank me one day... when they're hopeless impatient perfectionists with no grasp on shifting linguistic patterns and a stubbornly, increasingly archaic, vocabulary.

I'll have a garden that I absolutely hate to tend and is therefore full of plant corpses and pots of mud. There will be a sandpit that's continually too wet to play in and a swing that always needs cleaning. The children's jeans will never quite have clean bottoms.

I'll be on a diet even more frequently as I am now, the only thing that will increase is the frequency with which I lie to myself about how much I've actually eaten. Sometimes I'll wonder if I should have married someone who was clean shaven. I'll look at the guitar I got when I was 21 and admit to myself I never intended to learn it. I'll still hate people who play guitars at social gatherings.

I'll visit the sea more. I'll get that teary, beautiful feeling when I hear my children called my Dad, "Grandpa". I'll play with Lego when the children are in bed and then swear blind it wasn't me when they're confused about the architecture in the morning. I'll keep a photo of James Gandolfini in my wallet. I'll know how to make spaghetti bolognese from scratch. I'll make my children finish all the dinner on their plates but tell their guests that they needn't when they visit.

I will still cry at Gordon Lightfoot but I still won't know why. The smell of Givenchy III will still remind me of endless games of Backgammon with my Grandma and I'll still wish I liked Amber jewellery so I could think more kindly on her taste.

I'll have a freestanding mixer for my baking and I'll have cooked at least one successful Christmas dinner for my clan. I will still be buying my brother ridiculous calendars for Christmas. I'll have my own Denby crockery and a really heavy frying pan that my husband has to lift for me when it's really full up. When my son is old enough he'll feel weird that I'm too weak to do it.

I'll still be excited about my future.