The 5 Ages of Man: Uncle Dysfunctional by AA Gill

1 Thirteen is the end of childhood and the beginning of being a teenager. You get balls and can’t sing ‘O for the Wings of a Dove’ any more. Things you are already too old for at 13 include birthday parties with clowns, Nerf guns, a 10-second start, the light on, Valentine’s cards from your nan and having your mum wash any of your body parts. But you can start swearing and wearing T-shirts that have pictures or slogans that refer to contemporary music. You can do weird adolescent s*** with your hair and you can kill things — rabbits, fish, nits. And, of course, there are the three big ones: you can wank, drink and smoke.

2 Twenty is a tough age because it slips past in the middle of so much else — university, gap year, leaving home, getting jobs. Twenty is the age where you finally, irrevocably put childish things behind you. ‘I forgot’ is no longer an excuse, neither is ‘I overslept’. At 20, you need to have a pair of leather shoes with laces, and a suit. At 20, you can’t be sick in the street, or in someone else’s wellington boots. Twenty is too old to dump a girl simply because you want to go to a festival in Serbia. It’s too old to shoplift or do wheelies on a pushbike. It’s too old to run down the street with a pretend assault rifle, and it’s too old to sing Whitney Houston songs at the back of a bus at midnight. But it’s not old enough to marry, be a father or give up on learning stuff. Or to decide you’re not good at anything. At 20, you should be able to cook proper food, not just fried, stoned, dude-munchies. Oh, and no more tattoos. But also remember you’re never too old to fold a paper aeroplane and fly it while making the noise of the Spitfire’s mighty Merlin engine soaring over the South Downs on a perfect June day.

3 Thirty is the man-up year. You stop smoking and doing coke. Now, you really are too old to wear a T-shirt anywhere but in the gym, and you should be there for health, not beauty. You can’t do hoodies any more, or trainers. No, really — no trainers. You should be able to tie a bow tie, have shirts that need cufflinks, and you can’t play kick-about football with the other balding, paunchy blokes on Wednesday evening. You all look pathetic. Thirty is the age when you have to admit that you will never play any professional sport, you will never be needed for a national team, and you can’t wear shorts in the city, or Speedos on the beach. From now on, your life is intellectual rather than physical, so you need to polish up your lounge act. At 30, you shouldn’t eat and sleep in the same room. You should be in a relationship that shares more than bodily fluids. At 30, when people ask, you should be able to say what you are rather than what you hope to be.