EIGHTEEN

So my niece just turned 18 and it's turning out to be a scary thing. I mean who, for goodness' sake, was born in 2002... after 9/11, after the Y2K bug and yes, after Opal Fruits got renamed as Starburst... and gets to call themselves an adult?

Well, a whole bunch of people now! Including my niece, whom I still think, is way too young for such a thing as growing up.

This is one of the great mysteries of time, isn't it?

When I look back on my own childhood, I can't help feeling it lasted longer - summers stretched out, school went on forever, learning was slow-speed, and Christmases were far apart enough to recapture the wonder in between. In my mind's eye now, those eighteen years expand into an ocean of time, far longer than the next eighteen years went: far deeper, far more meaningful. It felt like I had been a child forever.

And relatively speaking, I guess I actually had - all my life, in fact. But to others observing, those who were older, wiser - it must have flown by just as quickly as my niece's has. For me, it was only a few years ago I was pushing her around in the wheelie bin for a fun dare from a weird uncle. For her, that is simply a lifetime. Time plays tricks on us.

We celebrated her birthday in the park, where, in between rain showers, she blew out a candle in a Domino's pizza (she doesn't like cake) and opened a bottle of passion-fruit flavoured cider. I'll always be a fan of her, but I'm not sure I like time so much.