Welcome to the 50 Club, Monday 20 June 2022, day 825!

When I was a child every single thing would blow my mind, soaking it all up for fun, but now I only soak up wine!

I recently had a milestone birthday, I hit fifty! Or should I say it hit me, despite understanding the natural ageing process, I still can’t get my wee heid around the fact that I am fifty.

One minute I’m standing against the back court wall, not a care in the world, pure excited to be swinging a pair of my mum’s nylons with a tennis ball in the toe across my body, shitting it in case I fucked myself in the face and take my eye out, but still swinging harder and faster until the ball burst out the toe. My flosse posse pal said It was like a child’s version of Russian Roulette without the gun, of course.

Then in a blink of an eye I’m trying to catch a jobby in a container to do the all-important bowel sample, six attempts it took me!

I know everyone feels it but what the fuck has really happened to the time? It doesn’t feel that long ago I was gazing adoringly at Shakin Stevens on TOTP, knowing when he sang “ when I look into those big blue eyes, I start floating round in paradise” he was singing to me, my first celeb crush ❤ I adored him.

I remember in a bid to understand my development into womanhood (still trying) I snuck “Are you there God it’s me Margaret” under my jacket oot the library, it would have been a pure brass neck if I had got caught with that book by my pals! I must have read it a thousand times, it didn’t help a jot, and he/she/they were never there when I asked for anything. I guess they couldn’t give a toss that at age 13 my boobs were still in a 28 AA and not a 34 BB bra.

A few years later I had my first kiss with David Love, in the old Partick derelict train station tunnel, it was so romantic we were surrounded by bricks, bits of metal, and dumped sofas. I was so nervous, not sure if it was the thought of the kiss or the worry that my dad who never walked through the tunnel would randomly decide to do so and keep me in for the rest of my life.

What an experience that was! No having a clue what to do, we both dived in and ate each other’s faces off. I could hardly breathe and when I eventually came up for air, I had clumps of dried slabber all round my mouth and lockjaw. Eeeewwww, it didn't stop me from diving in again.

Then the next thing its exam time, six months of dogging it (playing truant ya dirty rascals) did not bode well for my exam results. Mind those torturous meetings with the school careers advisor, “what type of career would you like to pursue” “eh…(blowing a bazooka bubble) whit’s a career and what the fuck does pursue mean?” I still don’t know what I want to do and not sure I ever will. Then in a flash it’s a job, two jobs, a flat, responsibility for feeding myself, thank fuck I lived above a take-away or I would have eaten nothing, my diet consisted of, chips and curry sauce, chips and gravy and sometimes just to spice it up I added rice and onions. Never buy a flat above a takeaway unless you are in your twenties and still have the metabolism to burn off calories, or have an extremely strict exercise regime.

I was up the dancing four nights a week, easily sliding into size 10 clothes without the need of Vaseline and a coat hanger, a belly button that sat nearer my boobs than thighs, hipster trousers that just covered the top of my doo daa, bra tops, sandals, nae jacket. Getting pished on half lagers, stoating home at 5am, getting back up for work at 7am, still pished, vomiting in the work loos, reeking of booze trying to convince the boss I ate a dodgy mushroom for the 100th time, thinking that at her ripe old age of 38 she had forgotten what it was like to be young and was an uptight boring as fuck old boot!

Next thing it’s a bigger house, the realisation that if I want a decent job I might have to buckle down, the partying stops, studying starts, new jobs, travel, experience new cultures, take up running, start relationships and develop friendships.

Fast forward ten years, elderly relatives get ill and pass away, my desire for red wine is as strong as Dracula's need for virgin blood, relationships and friends change, my paunch develops my waist thickens, my hair doesn’t even have the decency to go grey, no it goes straight to fucking white and one day just to fuck me right off the Churchill chin appears. My boobs are still hanging on in there, only because they were never big enough to sag,

Reflecting on being 50 it struck me that I 've become so caught up in the everyday treadmill of life, I've become that fucking old boring boot! I canny remember the last time I had the excited buzz of a first experience, or from the little simple things in life, or danced like a maniac, or went on a swing, or tried new food, or ran like the clappers down a hill, I could go on and on and on.

I really don’t want to hit sixty and be an even more boring old boot, wearing fleeces, fingerless gloves, and shopping in Kirkwoods for a pleated skirt so I have made a brownie guide promise to myself to make the time and effort to experience new things and re-live the buzz of old ones.

So, If you happen to see me dreeping off a wall and no one is chasing me just ignore me or even better come and play!

“Dear God, it’s me Malky, sorry for all the times I called you a selfish prick I didn’t really mean it, thank you for ignoring me all those years ago when I asked for bigger boobs, I like them now” Amen