Ignore the age anxious, there’s life after 24... Isn’t there?

I hope Adele – as leader of Choir of Mid-to-late Twenties Moaners – finds an older role model

At 27 Adele laments “I’m so mad at getting old”.

You hit a certain age, I think 24, and suddenly all everyone talks about is how old they are, and what misery it is. In truth the topic is sort of a thrill. Nobody I know can tell a good ghost story, but get them on the subject of turning 29 and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.

Tummy fat, sales at DFS, “a nice glass of plonk and some Breaking Bad”. Ooooh go on, go on, mutter the younger ones, whipping themselves into a frenzy of delight (that poor old bastard!) and terror (it’s going to be me!).

I should say, I do it too. It’s pretty much a sine qua non of your mid-twenties, and I like to spook people on their birthdays as much as possible, in any case. (The wizening... I think it's begun!).

Consider 25, Adele’s record-breaking new album, in particular the song, “When We Were Young”. “We were sad of getting old,” she laments, at all of 27. “I’m so mad at getting old”.

Yikes, I thought, as I hummed along in a soulful bedroom duet. This is a fine mess. What about 45, or 60? We’ll all be permanent puddles, if things go on like this; looking in the mirror, weeping, listening to 25 to relive some of those joyful years, only to come to “When We Were Young” again and break in half on the spot. If getting old is a chore now, you’re sat at the top of an almighty downward slope.

I’m not convinced this is healthy. The best thing about worrying about getting old is using it as an excuse to act like a total animal. “You’re only this young once,” I think cheerfully, as I place my left ear to the centre of a really loud speaker parping out Justin Bieber’s comeback track, or step onto a nightbus that barely even slows past my stop on its way to Wembley. But, beyond putting your body into situations it’s likely to suffer from in both the present and the future, there's so little upshot to age anxiety.

You will get older. Everyone knows all the boring things that usually entails, so I’m not going to mention them here (we’ll find out soon enough, eh, bucko). All the same, if you ask me it’s a bit lily-livered, this suspicion among the young that because you maybe know what an index tracker is, or have views on the absorbability of Pampers, or have pledged your entire life to some attractive other human being, you – without any say in the matter – morph into great uncle Nigel. Even in the event you do all of these things, there’s no guarantee you come out the other end of the spaghetti machine of life smooth, dull and tasteless. (Don’t buy a spaghetti machine, that said.)

Truly I hope that Adele – as the leader of the Choir of Mid-to-late-Twenties Moaners – finds an older role model or two and relaxes. There must be literally dozens out there.

The one potentially useful thing to be anxious about, in my book – or specifically, my Facebook – is not the future, but the past. There I am, photographed on my 18th birthday, a mess. There you are at someone else’s 21st, not at your best. Maybe we look happy, but it’s probably because we were so gormless. This is the kind of anxiety that might get you somewhere. Even if you look terrific vis a vis the face, focus on the blemishes (the boyfriend, the blue WKD, I don’t know). Learning is earning.

I suppose it’s bit much to imagine that someone will come up with a thundering riposte to “Forever Young”, but this is the moment when it would start playing in a motivational “Getting Old in Style” montage, which wouldn’t feature any of Sylvester Stallone, Renée Zellweger, or Macaulay Culkin.

It could be that I’m kidding myself. Maybe everyone looks back on their twenties as the only decade in which life was truly interesting, a non-stop hit parade. Maybe that’s why Adele’s 25 is rescuing the music industry all on its own. But if that’s the case I’m going to spend the years I have left in a tizz, another broken record banging on about the latest grey hair. Sounds like a party, doesn’t it?