O/T----------SYMPTOMS OF BEING OVER 25-----------

1. You leave clubs before the end to "beat the rush".

2. You get more excited about having a roast on a Sunday than
going clubbing.

3. You stop dreaming of becoming a professional footballer and
start dreaming of having a son who might instead.

4. Before throwing the local paper away, you look through the
property section.

5. You prefer Later with Jools Holland to Top of the Pops.
6. All of a sudden, Tony Blair is not 50, he's only 50.

7. Before going out anywhere, you ask what the parking is like.

8. Rather than throw a knackered pair of trainers out, you keep
them because they'll be all right for the garden.

9. You buy your first ever T-shirt without anything written on
it.

10. Instead of laughing at the innovations catalogue that falls
out of the newspaper, you suddenly see both the benefit and
money saving properties of a plastic winter cover for your
garden bench and an electronic mole repellent for the lawn.
Not to mention the plastic man for the car to deter would-be thieves.

11. You make an effort to be in and out of the curry house by 11.

12. Sure, you have more disposable income, but everything you
want to buy costs between 200 and 500 quid.

13. You don't get funny looks when you buy a Disney video or a
Wallace and Gromit bubble bath, as the sales assistant assumes they
Are for your child.

14. Pop music all starts to sound crap.

15. You opt for Pizza Express over Pizza Hut because they don't
have any pictures on the menus and anyway, they do a really nice
half-bottle of house white.

16. You become powerless to resist the lure of self-assembly furniture.

17. You always have enough milk in.

18. To compensate for the fact that you have little desire to
go clubbing, you instead frequent really loud tapas restaurants and
franchise pubs with wacky names in the mistaken belief that you have

19. While flicking through the TV channels, you happen upon
C4's Time Team with Tony Robinson. You get drawn in.

20. The benefits of a pension scheme become clear.

21. You go out of your way to pick up a colour chart from B&Q.

22. You wish you had a shed.

23. You have a shed.

24. You actually find yourself saying "They don't make 'em like
that anymore" and "I remember when there were only 3 TV channels" and
"Of course, in my day...."

25. Radio 2 play more songs you know than Radio 1 - and Jeremy
Vine has some really interesting guests on.

26. Instead of tutting at old people who take ages to get off
the bus, you tut at schoolchildren whose diction is poor.

27. When sitting outside a pub you become envious of their
hanging baskets

28. You come face to face with your own mortality for the first
time, and the indestructibility of the 20s gives way to a realisation
that you are but passing through this life and if you don't settle
down soon and have kids you'll have no-one to look after you when
you're old and frail and incontinent and you can't go on p**sing your life up
against a wall forever and think of how many brain cells you're
destroying every time a swift half turns into 10 pints, and look at
that, a full set of stainless steel saucepans for 99 quid, they cost
as much as 35 each if you buy them separately, and you get a milk pan thrown in, ...