It’s a new year and I’m half way through the how-did-I-get-here age of 37. This, I felt, is actually GROWN UP (probably) and I thought it was a good time to sit back and consider all the things I have learned from all my worldly experiences. Then, after some hysterical laughter and some tequila based flashbacks, I realised that no one knows anything, really. Here, then, are 37 things that I’ve learned by the age of 37.

1. Parents are usually right. Even when they’re wrong, they usually have a good reason for being wrong.

2. More than two nights staying with said parents, however, and you will revert to a teenage attitude which prevents point 1 being comprehensible.

3. Drinking more than four tequila slammers in 30 minutes never, ever, ends well.

4. Nothing makes you feel more grown up than removing the batteries from a child’s toy to make it shut the hell up.

5. No one really understands how stock markets work.

6. Tea towels can be a surprisingly lucrative business.

7. It’s always a good idea to go to California.

8. At some point, you will stop fancying football players, and start fancying football managers. Embrace this, and try and get interested in the European leagues for your own sense of pride and dignity.

9. No one knows what dress size you’re wearing unless you tell them, so wear what fits and strut it out.

10. Reading is brilliant.

11. It really does help, when on a sinking ferry in a shark-infested lake in Nicaragua, to think that this is going to make a good pub story.

12. Ex-boyfriends never seem to get better looking with age.

13. Being able to say no to people is much harder to do and much better for you than saying yes. Most of the time.

14. Hayfever sufferers do not get enough sympathy from the world at large. It’s four months of hell, people, and you expect a faux-jolly weather announcer to make us feel better? It doesn’t help. At all. We need tissues, cooling eye patches and bellinis, at 500 metre intervals. And no, I don’t want to go on a picnic.

15. Britain in February is one of the grimmest places in the world. I applaud anyone who slogs through it, and refer you to point 7.

16. It’s always nice to have one body part you like at all times. Three is the optimum.

17. Make sure one of those parts you like belongs to you. Or it could get embarrassing.

18. Trousers aren’t as flattering as magazines would have you believe.

19. Contrary to popular opinion, it is possible to repeatedly stall a diesel car.

20. Mascara brush designers are usually taking the piss.

21. Tights are a necessary evil. Try and move somewhere where they aren’t necessary.

22. Thirty seven is a much larger number than it seems initially. Eek.

23. Never trust people who aren’t keen on cake.

24. Most people who say they aren’t feminists don’t understand what feminism is.

25. If they do understand, and still think they aren’t, consider point 7 for yourself. And maybe treat them to point 3.

26. Dr Jesus Gonzales of Acapulco is an excellent physician.

27. There’s no better place in the world to get a leech than on the flanks of Mount Warning. Like, dur, I was totally warned already.

28. Exotic is in the eye of the visitor. It’s normal if you live there.

29. I rarely get to use any of my favoured two letter scrabble words in conversation. This makes me sad.

30. But I also feel a bit smug about knowing them, so it balances out.

31. I shall probably never know or understand what happened to my underwear in Southern Mexico.

32. Point 31 has nothing to do with point 26.

33. If someone says they’ve broken their toe, you should not laugh, but take them very seriously. Especially the second time.

34. Belgium is much better than you’re led to believe.

35. Wearing wedge heels while walking down ramps is not easy. Again, see point 3.

36. Cities make me happy.

37. That I am loved, and I love, and I like who I am very much indeed.

Goddammit, the twee bit sneaked in at the end.