The truth about 49

Just a number, apparently.

Today is my birthday. I am 49. No further comment.

To ‘celebrate’, here are 49 things I have learned in my 49 years on Earth that I would love to share with you:

1. Just kidding. 49 things I have learned? I can’t even remember what I had for lunch last Wednesday, let alone delve into my personal archive for pearls of alleged wisdom. Sorry, you’re on your own.

Instead, I have been thinking about the slightly wonky scientific assertion that I read on Instagram – on a comment under a post where someone was adding artificially sweetened flavouring dust to a glass of tap water – that the cells in your body pretty much renew themselves every seven years. It’s probably bollocks, but maybe it isn't, and emotionally and environmentally a lot can change in seven years that can certainly make you feel like a different person.

I’ve also seen people talking about the advice they would give their younger selves. People are obsessed with this, aren’t they? As if they are somehow now as wise as they will ever be, like you ever stop learning, that you are now an authority when – logically – your future self might well contradict you there. It’s a concept I’ve never really gone anywhere near, namely because my past selves wouldn’t be remotely interested in talking to someone wearing what I’m wearing as I type this. And wouldn’t guiding a past version of you in an opposite direction lead them away from who you are now? Who knows what other disasters that alternative universe you would have encountered? Forks in the road are bad enough when you face them, let alone somehow inventing time travel and going back to mull over previous diversions you missed. Yes, I am fun at parties.

But on your birthday you can be indulgent, shrug off your insecurities or petty rules you choose to live by, so as seven sevens make 49, I thought I’d visit my past selves at seven-year intervals to see exactly what was happening in those old skins I used to wear, and what I might have benefitted from knowing back then. We should also laugh at the bad haircuts.

42

What’s going on: It’s the final week of 2017 and my first novel is just weeks from publication.

One majorly annoying thing about being an author is that you constantly live working toward the next thing, future publications and projects so dominant in your mind it can be hard to enjoy the present. There’s not much time to rest on your laurels (or, perhaps more beneficially, moon over your cock-ups). I was convinced, I remember, that I would die in a horrible accident before the book came out and obviously I didn’t. The Last Romeo did well and I wore the most expensive shirt I’ve ever owned to the launch. (I wore a Uniqlo t-shirt to the most recent one, which speaks volumes.)

Hair status: Great.

Sage advice to 42-year-old me: Wear a different pair of glasses to the launch, and make sure someone takes photos – there is hardly any record of this event happening.

35

What’s going on: It’s 2010 and I am single and living in a one-bedroom flat in Camberwell by myself. I run four times a week and go to the gym on the other days. The past really is another country. The Guyliner blog has been going for about six months. Somewhat excitingly, I am in the midst of two winter flings – yes, at the same time – all very casual, as things tend to be as the old year turns to new: hurried drinks in crowded pubs with steamed-up windows; trying to work out if you are still attractive underneath the scarf, gloves, and bobble hat (j/k all my hats were unbobbled); the battle between the bright twinkling optimism of the season and your own inbuilt self-destruct button.

Hair status: Cropped quite close at this point, I think. Looks great, frankly.

Sage advice to 35-year-old me: Enjoy your dark hair while the colour still holds out.

28

What’s going on: It’s the dying days of 2003 and I have been in London just over a year and live in a small one-bed with my then-boyfriend. I am in a job I don’t really like but can put up with, and it feels like I am never going to achieve my ambitions: to write full-time; to have a more fun, cooler job; and to have enough money to breathe easier for a bit. All that is about to change, and by summer 2004, I have all of those things – I also have chicken pox, but that’s another story.

Hair status: Critical condition. Mullets were big, and I had a short one. And it gets even worse. Sadly, I am about to embark on the very worst hairstyle of my entire life, that takes up much of 2004 – at New Year’s Eve it resembles what I can only describe as a giant pineapple-owl hybrid on my head – and endures in some form for almost all of 2005. Just hideous. As my 30th birthday approaches, I get rid of it – thank you to Simon at Pimps & Pinups at Spitalfields – and get one of those amazing, heavy sweeping fringes that were a big deal back then.

Sage advice to 28-year-old me: Nothing. It all had to happen exactly as it did. That hair will make you stronger.

21

What’s going on: 1996 is on its way out and I have received the key of the door. I remember exactly what I was wearing that day: a horrible logo-heavy Calvin Klein T-shirt that I bought from Harvey Nichols in Leeds just so I could get a carrier bag – you used to get a special one in the Menswear section, in a fetching dark green – and horrendous skinny velour trousers. Mercifully my footwear that day goes unrecorded. The year after my 21st will be a brutal one in some ways: my Irish nana dies and, at university in the south of England, I feel very far from home. My 21st birthday is one of the last times I ever see her and I learn, quickly, that the ‘key of the door’ is actually a passport to some of the suckiest experiences ever. But I have my friends and there are parties and there is getting wasted and my throw myself into all of it. I have yet to confront my sexuality in any meaningful way and will not for a good couple of years. I am not so much closeted as bewildered by the feeling of my own skin being too right around the throat, but I am not unhappy.

Hair status: Grade 4 all over. I had the cheekbones for it in those days.

Sage advice to 21-year-old me: Again, nothing. You’ll work it out.

14

What’s going on: It’s 1989 and, only seven years earlier, I am a child. And I really am a child. I am not like teenagers on TV who look 18 and have adventures, and go to parties, and are torn apart by feelings of lust and longing. I look around 11, if I’m being generous, and I have just started a new upper school and, frankly, I hate it. I spend most of my time in my bedroom writing or watching TV or reading. Nobody knocks on the door for me and in a way, I’m glad – I never feel particularly safe out and about in my hometown as a teen. It is a strangely territorial place, even from street to street, and any blow-in is regarded with suspicion and, if assessed as weak enough to be exploited, will be dealt with. And quite frankly I have had enough of that at school. Music and my imagination are my portals out of my very low-key life, and the knowledge that as soon as I am able, I will leave this town and this boy behind and be who I want to be, whatever that means. The first part takes me four years, the second, a decade.

Hair status: I was very deep into gelled spikes at this juncture. It looked amazing, obviously. Went fabulously with my freckles and teeth that were too big for my head.

Sage advice to 14-year-old me: Oh, mate. I’m just going to have to let you live it. You’ll never understand the person you become otherwise.

7

What’s going on: 1982 is on the descent, 1983 awaits. A pivotal year for my family, as it will turn out, but other than that, life concerns the usual business of being seven. I have a love of books and like regular trips to the library. The books that I own, I read again and again, but somehow it isn’t enough. I’ve already started writing my own stories on the inside covers, and scrawling over the endpapers, all about characters of my own invention, scenarios I can only imagine, dialogue between them bouncing off the insides of my brain. I sit at my little desk in the corner of the living room and fill pages of plain paper with absolute nonsense. I ask for a typewriter for Christmas. The future is born here. Not so different after all, maybe.

Hair status: I’m seven, and thus have no agency. I get taken for a terrifying crew cut every two months which grows into… pretty much the hairstyle I have now. There is nothing new under the sun, baby.

Sage advice to seven-year-old me: The only advice I have for this little boy is advice I didn’t need, because I do it already – never forget who you are now, but focus more on who you will be one day.

49

What’s going on: And today, in 2024, which is basically another planet, how am I doing? Glad to be still here, still scribbling away. Except now the only endpapers I’m interested in are the ones of my own books, and the only scrawling I do in them is a dedication and a signature for the readers who buy them. Discoveries, delights, disappointments, and other alliterations come and go, and I haven’t worked out all the answers yet, but the fun is in the trying.

Hair status: Well, I like it, and that’s the main thing.

Sage advice to 49-year-old me: I have no interest in any advice from the likes of you, thank you.

Happy birthday to me and happy everything to you. Thank you for reading.

VERY LATE CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

My gift guide has only four items in it:

It’s actually too late to order them to arrive in time for Christmas so my advice would be to tell potential recipients either a) “the book is on its way so maybe get over yourself” or b) “Christmas is so bourgeois; I am all about New Year”.

Buy Leading Man ⭐️ Buy The Last Romeo ⭐️ Buy The Magnificent Sons ⭐️ Buy The Fake-Up