There are moments in your life when, with a brief stab of pain, you realise you’ve crossed another rubicon in the hike from birth to death. I had a big one last Saturday at the cricket at Edgbaston, but I’ll come to that shortly. But first, here’s the kind of thing I mean. When I was about 17, there was standing room only on the local train into Birmingham. A woman said to her little boy: “Stand up, so this man can sit down.”
Never mind whatever I’d done at school, or hadn’t done with girls, or anything my family or friends had said to me: this was the instant I knew I was no longer a boy; I was a man.
At that age, mainly because I was desperate to get served in pubs, I always wanted to look older. It was just awful to be taken for a 15-year-old when you were knocking on the door of the legal drinking age. Then, suddenly, it’s the other way round. I was 32 and about to become a father when another prospective father I was chatting to in the hospital took me for 25. I was thrilled, but knew then that the want-to-look-older phase of my life was gone, never to return.
More shockingly, when I was in my 20s, my whole family was at a schoolfriend’s wedding in Brighton. I was chatting to the new girlfriend of a mate of ours called Marcus. She didn’t know many people there. Slightly running out of conversation, I asked her where Marcus was. “He’s over there, chatting to some old guy,” she said. I looked over and there was Marcus talking to my dad. My blood ran cold; Dad was indeed an old guy. I’d never noticed before.
And at this very moment, as I write this, my blood is running cold again, because I’ve just worked out that my dad then was the same age that I am now. Ergo, I am an old guy. Another ghastly rubicon crossed there; thanks for being with me at this traumatic moment.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot – a man who I think looked not much younger than me stood up for me on the tube the other day. Nice gesture from the chap; I really wish he hadn’t made it.
And so on to last Saturday’s kick in the Niagaras at the cricket. The first time I heard another real horror word in the advancing-years lexicon was seven years ago, when I was 45. I was consulting London’s leading foot surgeon about a problem I had with my achilles tendon. He hailed from Swansea. When I told him how much I love that part of the world, he said: “Oh, are you going to retire there?” Huh? It wasn’t just my achilles throbbing when I left his office.
And so to Edgbaston, where I was with several medics, one of whom I’ve known man and boy since we started primary school in 1971. Rhey spent the day tossing the R-word around as casually as fielders returning the ball to the bowler. I implored them to stop; it was distressing. Panicking now, I worked out I may have only 15 Ashes series left in my life. Mind you, the way this Test turned out, that might be no bad thing.
• Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian columnist
