I just heard this expression last night. In exchange for telling a guy of the old “never mind the quality, feel the width” line that you don’t even remember, he told me that the new insult is to refer to someone has having been born in the 1900s.

Of course, if you were born in 1999 then you would be 23 now but you also wouldn’t be insulted by the phrase, wouldn’t take it as a dig at your age, and quite possibly wouldn’t be reading this. The unstated cut is that you’re not actually aged between 23 and a maximum 121, it’s that you are indeed 121 and that you look every pixel of your age.

There is so much I wish I’d done sooner, been able, been capable of doing sooner. And there are a handful of things I’d rather I hadn’t done yet or, indeed, at all. On balance, I should’ve done more of both.

But otherwise I’m okay with my age, okay with where I am, quite a bit more than okay, sometimes, with what I’m doing. I can cope with 2022.

I just don’t seem to be able to cope with January.

This time I’m somehow still in a fuzzy cloud post-Christmas and at exactly the same time I estimate that we are already coming up on six million days into the year.

This week, I had a Zoom chat with a friend who, when pressed, admitted that she’d had to get up early to talk to me. I am profoundly flattered that anyone would, but in that moment the idea of being able to lie in on a morning was damn appealing. I’m just not sure how I can square that with how the fact that all month I’ve been struggling to get up before 7am.

I’ve had to today, fortunately. When I send this to you, I have to drive off to a school and spend the day there as a visiting author. I did a journalism day in a school last October, but otherwise it’s been over two years since I did this and the only real surprise so far is that I’m exactly as nervous as I was last time and the time before and the time before.

There is a difference. Schools often offer me a lunch but then most of the time I forget that they have, spend the entire lunch hour gassing away with pupils and teachers, and then wonder why I’m so exceptionally hungry.

Not today. Today I’ve learned a lesson and have made sandwiches.

And then there’s also that I took a lateral flow test last night and while it was negative, while it was fine, I learned in that pregnancy-test-style wait just how there is something that makes me more nervous than going into a school. It’s the prospect of not going in when you’ve promised to.

I’m nervous enough that as much as I know I’ll enjoy it, as much as I think it’s a privilege to be asked into a school, right now I would rather make you a mug of tea and ask how you’re doing.

Let me put the kettle on.