Six ways you're worried you're not a proper adult

DID you assume you’d be a fully-functioning, grown-up adult by now? Here are the things you thought you’d effortlessly cope with, but can’t.

Being told off by your boss

Your boss can’t really do anything terrible to you, but you have a total fear of confrontation. It’s a lot like childhood, when you lived in terror of a weedy 11-year-old bully who, now you think about it, never actually hit anyone.

Public speaking

Addressing even a small group of people turns you into a shaking, hyperventilating wreck. The worst thing is that your younger self arrogantly assumed you’d be a high-achiever confidently advising lesser employees, so you feel like a bit of a knob as well.

Graveyards

As an adult you don’t believe in supernatural rubbish, obviously. But you get a bloody move on when you’re walking past a graveyard at night. You may even avoid looking at it in case you see a skeletal hand clawing its way out of the ground.

Basic health tasks

Real adults just visit a dentist if they get twinges. You put it off for months because you’ve devised a mad fantasy where all your teeth will have to be pulled out, you’ll be fitted with dentures and only be able to eat mushed-up banana. Also no one will ever sleep with you again. Then it turns out you just need a scrape and polish.

Having a relationship

Other adults all seem to be happily married and had a proper wedding and everything, but all your relationships have fizzled out like the flings of your 20s. Telling yourself you’re young, free and single doesn’t really cut it, because only the ‘single’ bit applies.

Personal finances

You’ve got a savings account, but the pitiful amount of cash in there would barely see you through a minor crisis like needing a new shower. Or possibly having to buy new shoes and trousers at the same time.

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Would you rather live in a skip or sleep with Michael Gove?

COLUMNIST Sarah Vine has defended the Downing Street flat redecoration, saying the PM should not ‘live in a skip’. However, this is someone who shares a bed Michael Gove. Which would you prefer?

Living in a skip: the advantages

Certainly, living in a skip presents its challenges. Only a sheet of tarpaulin protects you from the elements, there is rust and rainwater to contend with, plus the furniture dumped in the skip might come from an inferior outlet such as John Lewis.

However, as you eventually dozed off, to the accompaniment of the chattering of your teeth, you would at least know the little creature nuzzling against you was not possible future prime minister Michael Gove but merely a scavenging rat.

You would also be unable to plug in a TV that the endlessly irritating Gove might appear on at any second, which more than makes up for having to use a piece of wood as a pillow.

Sleeping with Michael Gove: the disadvantages

At 11 Downing Street you would wake each morning in unimaginable luxury which would make your current bedroom feel like a sleeping bag in the men’s toilets at Doncaster coach station by comparison.

However, as you came to each day you would realise that your bed was shared with the charmless and nakedly ambitious Gove. Possibly even literally naked, which would be like a nightmare sequence from a horror film.

If he then said ‘You know what – I’m feeling a bit frisky!’ it’s likely you would run screaming to the nearest bay window to leap into a back alley in search of a nice cold Gove-free skip anyway.

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