It has been an odd week.

It started on Monday when I woke to discover my 30’s had flitted in the night, leaving no forwarding address, no thank you note and only an old bar of soap for me to sniff in remembrance. 40 is a strange age and one that is too grown up for me to understand. I am no longer a girl or young woman; I am now the age of a parent, except I don’t have any children to accurately accessorise my new years. I thought as someone not planning to have children, I would somehow be able to spend more time in my 30’s; that somehow 36 (my optimal age) would be set to continuous repeat. This has not been the reality.

So that was the start of a week that continued the next day with a cab, flight, train and car journey to London for a party entirely in my honour to celebrate my enrolment to 40. I have never had a party in my honour since I was six, and that party was not fortified with margarita’s and Prosecco. This one also featured a fabulous quiz that was impossible for me to get wrong since it was all about me! 40 questions about me and whatever answer I gave became the correct answer for everyone to get right. They were graded and I was not.

I didn’t feel so groovy the next morning when with a hangover, I had to drive from Kensal Green to Fulham, a journey I used to do with my eyes shut (not literally you understand), but after 8 years and overhung with distilled grapes, now made me really nervous. Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith roundabout – oh crap! Of course I managed it beautifully. Later that day, I took the choo-choo home to Edinburgh and for the first time was not able to blag an upgrade to first class which I took as the first sign that I really was finally too old. I had to find a seat with the hoi polloi way down in economy which, was fine until some awful man went to sleep on me. I am now terrified that in my 40’s, he was the first of many.

The next day brought some anti-climax tempered with new excitement as I was going to the book launch of ‘Scott-Land: The Man who Invented a Nation’, the new book by our Reader-in-Residence, Stuart Kelly. Indeed, I started this post in a bar called Reverie, right across the road from the offices of Birlinn Limited where the event was being held. Being early is a rare occurence for me and it gave me time to power-suck a gin and tonic through a straw and do some reading. Hmmm … there may be something to this early movement after all.

Stuart Kelly is not only so widely read that he falls of the spectrum at both ends, but is incredibly dapper. Should Scott Schuman ever bring The Sartorialist to the streets of Edinburgh, Stuart would have at least a four sequence shot. Eschewing his customary Converse sneakers on Thursday, we were treated to white leather winkle pickers, which made me wonder if David Bishop is branching out into personal shopping. I was not so dapper having found a vintage Hank sweater in my attic which I was determined to wear whether if went with anything or not. I am very stubborn sometimes.

The most unusual thing this week though has been the number of funny gaits I have seen. This of course may be simply because I have spent more time on public transport recently – also a good way of squeezing in some extra reading.

So I end this week behind on a number of tasks, a little ahead on my reading, desperately needing to detox, wondering if people laugh at me when I walk, older but thankfully still childless. I deserve a cocktail.