Have I just become a boring male cliché?

I'm yet to reach 30, but I'm already turning into everything I thought I didn't want to be, writes Sean Russell

‘That’s when it hit me, I was quite content in that moment, too content’ (iStock/Getty Images)

It came on quite suddenly. It was a Thursday evening and I was minding my business at home after work. I was five days past my 29th birthday and it was then that I realised it – I had gone up a level, I'd reached the top echelons of boring middle-class man.

In some circles this might seem quite momentous, a coming of age of sorts. So, how did it happen? I had settled on the sofa and turned on Netflix and started to watch an episode of the Second World War documentary, Greatest Events of WWII in Colour. I then took the Lego McLaren Formula 1 car I've been building – a birthday present from my girlfriend – and I continued the model, following the booklet step by step.

That's when it hit me, I was quite content in that moment, too content, just building a model car while watching a war documentary. I'd become everything I never wanted to be. I then remembered that just the week before I had also bought Sir Ian Kershaw's seminal biography of Adolf Hitler.