I Resign From Adulthood

Dear Life

This Adulthood is not all it's cracked up to be. When I was a child, there were no real deadlines, and I got a week of summer holidays for every year of my life, and that was just the summer ones; there were a lot more than that.

I could go for bike rides all day, and explore fields, and yes, I got shot at by farmers while exploring in their fields. I suppose that wouldn't be acceptable today, but the world in some ways is far smaller than it used to be.

I know there was school with fights, school bullies, school dinners and bad teachers, but there were more great teachers as well, and they all wanted me to succeed, as did my parents.

Coffee in Brucianni's and the Palace, when I should have been in lessons, was great fun. Brucianni's is still here, the Palace isn't, but the memories are. Brucianni's is next to the first KFC in the UK, and that is still there. I remember being shocked when I first visited and didn't get cutlery.

Then it was time to leave school, get a job, a girlfriend, a car, go drinking, enjoy life and be able to do everything I couldn't afford to do when I was still at school, like the Beach Boys said:

As a child, play made life great; it got me through the less good times, like the floods and the house fire. I had friends I played with, explored with, shared music with, and then when school ended and I turned eighteen, I was suddenly an adult, and had to get a bank account and a chequebook.

I was expected to become an adult, to grow up, to be responsible.

But the child in me wanted to play, to watch TV, to read books, to learn to play guitar (I loved the Beatles), to write a book, to enjoy life as I had as a child.

As I got older, there were more and more responsibilities. While I regarded work as a game I got paid for, and found bringing up my daughters wonderful (we played so many computer games and read so many books together), but then came bills and tax, voting, household chores, house and cat maintenance, mowing the lawn, weeding, laundry.

I didn't want these, I want to play.

While I know I have to take some control over finances, I do not worship money as some do; it's a means to an end, and more convenient than bartering.

My inner child is why I am writing this and why I resigned from being an adult. My inner child lets me play games, and OK, the adult in me makes money to allow the child in me to play, explore, make music, and I have published a book. None of that would have happened if I had fully embraced being an adult.

I still wear T-shirts and would never countenance a vest or most adult clothing. I will wear a tie for a formal occasion, but I have forgotten the last time I wore one.

Oh, and adult TV entertainment that blankets Saturday and Sunday Nights on ITV and BBC just makes me switch off. In the seventies and eighties, switching off was the only alternative.

So much of adulthood makes me want to scream, you are expected to always toe the line, and I have never done that.

You may say that resigning adulthood would mean signing away all the things that enable me to do the things I want. Definitely not.

Think.

As a child, you have ambitions. You want to be an astronaut, or a model, or a digger driver, or a Formula One driver, and then when you hit adulthood, it's always well, you could work in a call centre or train to be an accountant, or stack shelves in a warehouse or supermarket. Adulthood often puts a stop to our childhood dreams.

The ones who nurture their inner child often find success in doing what they wanted to as a child, and even if they are not successful, they often find happiness pursuing their dream.

And so these are the reasons why I am resigning from Adulthood. I am not giving anything up, I am taking back my dreams and fun that Adulthood has done its best to stifle.

This resignation makes me a winner.

While we can't stop our bodies from getting older, we can make sure our minds don't.

So I am going to play games and draw pictures with Alexis Leia, I am going to meet and laugh with friends, I am going to explore castles and Roman ruins, ride bikes, write stories and poetry, write songs and play music.

Adulthood, this is my resignation letter.

Goodbye.