Will I ever be a ‘proper’ adult?

Sometimes, I look at my five-year-old child and think: she is more mature than I am

Soon, it will be a year since I last had an alcoholic drink. Getting sober has much to recommend it: a clear head; no hangovers; sparkling eyes; renewed energy; the realisation that nobody has ever woken up in the morning and thought: “Oooh, I wish I’d had some booze last night…”

But it is not all good news. Climbing on to the wagon has had some unforeseen consequences. For example, when something bad happens in your life, there is no way of pretending it hasn’t happened by drowning yourself in drink. You just have to sit there with the bad thing, rubbing up against it, getting to know it, when really you would rather be in the pub with your friends pretending that the bad thing does not exist.

Also, you become aware that you do actually have a sweet tooth – it’s just that before you didn’t actually need anything sweet because you were getting all your sugar through booze.

But the biggest epiphany I have had since getting sober is this: I’ve realised that I have absolutely no idea how to be a grown-up.

With every waking moment, I am hit with the feeling that I must have been off school sick the day that they taught the class about how to be an adult. “Adulting”, as the millennials like to call it, has completely passed me by, even though I just turned 38, have a mortgage, a husband and a five-year-old daughter.

Sometimes, I look at my child, pushing her doll around in its pram, talking to me about how she would like to write the shopping list this week, and I think: “Oh my God. My daughter is more mature than I am.” I have no idea how I got here, how I have been entrusted with responsibilities and a job that I have somehow managed not to lose, carelessly, in the endless clutter that is my life.

Getting sober is like driving a car full of junk and braking suddenly, so that all of the junk gets thrown into the front of the vehicle and you find yourself sitting in it. Or at least I imagine it is just like that, given that I can’t actually drive. (I was too busy ordering pints of Session ale and regaling people with stories about the time a man handed me back someone else’s knickers to bother to get a driving licence.)

This all hit me right between the eyes the other day, when I realised that I was no longer in possession of a valid passport – a problem, given that I am due to go on holiday any minute now. I’ve know that my passport was going to expire for, oooh, 10 years now and, for a good four months, that we are soon to be spending two weeks in France, but did I bother being sensible and leaving plenty of time to renew it? Of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I waited until three days after the passport had expired, wept at how young and beautiful I was back in 2008, and then went to the Passport Office, where I had to spend double the standard fee to get it sorted in time for our holiday.

I tweeted about being off school the day that they taught the adulting class and, to my relief, many people got in touch to let me know that they, too, had been sick that day. We began to share the seemingly simple, grown-up things that, for reasons unknown, we are unable to do.

And I thought I would share them with you, just in case you thought you were alone in being a woman- or man-child.

Having just one drink (see above).

Putting clothes away in cupboards and drawers, and not creating a “floordrobe” in your bedroom.

Unpacking the moment you get back from your holiday, instead of leaving the suitcase in the hall for several days until you trip over it one night on the way to get a glass of water from the kitchen.

Remembering to take a glass of water to bed with you.

Not chasing the bin lorry down the street every week.

Remembering that you have gone to the shop to buy loo roll, and not three cartons of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Not allowing condiments to stay in your cupboards five years past their sell-by date.

Changing the time on the oven when the clocks go backwards and forwards, instead of telling yourself that the time will be right for at least six months of the year, and six out of 12 ain’t bad.

Throwing away empty bottles of shampoo and shower gel in the bathroom.

Forgetting to pay the £2.50 Dartford Crossing charge, and ending up with a £70 fine.

Any more? Please do forget to send me an email that you really meant to write – or, alternatively, a letter, leaving it at the bottom of your handbag for two weeks before you remember to post it.