A friend texted me this morning and asked if I fancied joining her on a trip to the garden centre.

“Ooh yes please,” was my excited reply and I started to make a list in my head of what I needed to buy.

Then I caught myself.

When did a garden centre visit suddenly become the highlight of my week?

Not least because all I have in the way of a garden is a three square

metre yard covered in decking, as is the norm for most of Brighton and Hove.

But when did buying potting compost and hardy perennials start to float my boat?

It can only be an age thing, well certainly in my case anyway.

Until quite recently I could not have given a flying fig about how best to cultivate a herb garden, but now in my mid-forties, it has begun to give me genuine joy.

I now relish the thought of

making our backyard look pretty for summer.

Just to emphasise how serious this new found love is, albeit on a tiny scale, I turned the TV on the other night to see Gardeners’ World already on, and left it on.

I am yet to develop a crush on Monty Don mind you, so there is hope.

There are plenty of other signs I am on the slippery age slope too.

Things like making involuntary noises when I get up or going into a room and forgetting why I am there have been happening to me since my twenties.

But the first time I truly realised I had hit middle-age was when I started taking my slippers with me to other people’s houses.

This is next level middle-age behaviour as far as I am concerned and, when the thought of packing my slippers in my bag for life first occurred to me, I was horrified at myself.

Then I quickly realised just how much I hate cold feet and how there is a distinct lack of carpet in many homes these days and smugness took over.

So, if you ever do invite me over, expect me to come with my fluffy feet warmers in tow.

Oh and also expect me to start making “I am leaving soon” signals just before 10pm.

That is the other thing I have to do at least six nights out of seven now –get to bed at a reasonable time.

This coming from the girl who used to go the distance at all night

raves on just a cup of tea, every weekend.

There are only two reasons you will find me up and about at 3am these days.

The first is if I am going on holiday and have to catch one of those hideous early flights and the other is to answer a call of nature. And yes I did just say “call of nature.”

Sometimes I am such an adult I frighten myself.

While we are on the subject of bedtime, my routine is getting longer than that of my seven-year-old, who can stretch it out with all kinds of bizarre, non-bedtime related requests.

Mine involves the application of that many anti-ageing lotions and potions, I could start my own skincare clinic.

Then there is the multitude of vitamins I take to keep my joints healthy, my skin glowing and my immune system ticking over.

A recent addition to this routine

is my obsession with body temperature.

I have to be just warm enough to actually get to sleep which involves a complicated ritual involving an extra throw on the bed, socks warmed on the radiator and one of those scented pillow things heated up in the microwave.

Of course, because of my age, I then wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I might spontaneously combust.

You know that feeling when you are abroad with no air-con and you can barely even deal with a single sheet touching your skin?

It is a bit like that, but without the sound of crickets.

So then off comes the extra throw and the fluffy socks and usually the PJs, while the heated pillow thing is lobbed across the room.

By the time morning comes I am pretty much naked with a wet flannel draped over my face.

I have not even hit the menopause properly yet and am already utterly dreading it.

It is not all doom and gloom to be fair, we still love a party when we get the chance.

We have tickets booked for a weekend-long festival in June, with all our favourite old school DJs on the line-up.

There also happens to be a nice hotel just up the road so I can

be tucked up in a cosy bed before midnight.