Ageing – it’s a piece of cake!

So, I went for some cake (following my previous blog detailing my recent fatastrophe), but although the cake was delicious and my stomach was clamped in place by my tightest fitting jeans, unfortunately this was to spark my second personal crisis of the week.

I had been joined in my cake fest by my good friend and the fantastic writer Anna May Mangan at our local coffee shop (Sounds Like Jarpucks). We like to meet there from time to time to drink frothy coffee, eat cake and talk life and the universe and, oh yes, writing.

Last time we met I had got there first and ordered my drink and cake. When Anna arrived she went and got a drink but refrained from any eats. I remember thinking that she might have been on a diet, or ‘devastated’ that she’d eaten a biscuit the night before, a la Carly Zucker (see previous blog) but once she had sat down she began furtively fumbling in her bag under the table before bringing out a delicious looking muffin that had quite obviously not been purchased in Sounds Like Jarpucks.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered, shocked.

‘I’ve smuggled a cake in,’ she replied. ‘It’s from Sounds Like Pchibo – their cakes are so much nicer than the ones they do here. Try some.’

Just one mouthful of deliciously moist lemon muffin was all it took to make me realise that she was right. And I knew that from then on there would be no going back. So I pushed my too-dry carrot cake to one side and tucked in to Anna May’s contraband.

Yesterday, when we met up, we had planned ahead. Anna was smuggling two cakes in this time- one  for each of us.

Hearts racing, we set up our lemon muffins behind our giant sized coffee mugs and, eyes darting around furtively for any sign of a  Sounds Like Jarpucks employee on the prowl, we tucked in.

But then suddenly I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. The last time I had done something like this had been back when I was a teenager and had started going clubbing up in London. Unable too afford the pocket money busting drinks in the West End, my friends and I would smuggle small bottles of vodka into clubs and then slip shots into glasses of coke when no-one was looking.

Back then it had felt so reckless and wild – each throat-burning sip a reminder of the huge risk we were taking. But if someone had told me then that in twenty years time I would be getting the same thrill from secretly munching on smuggled muffins in a coffee shop I think I would have died of mortification! Is this what happens to you as you approach 40? Is this as ‘rock and roll’ as it gets?

And if so, what next? Getting my kicks from shoplifting denture glue? Eating a packet of Polos to disguise the smell of Horlicks on my breath?!!