CERTAIN things are the height of cool when you’re in your teens and 20s. But once you hit 30, they quickly become deeply, deeply tragic. Including these.

Being in a band

The ability to clumsily strum out Stairway to Heaven is a ticket to Cool Town in your teens, however it’s an ever-depreciating asset. Unless you quickly learn how to write your own songs, tour, and get picked up by a record label, your musical ambitions should be left to die. You’re 34 and you do data entry for a living. It’s over, accept it.

Dating someone in their early 20s

Hotties in their physical prime have an understandable appeal, but by your mid-to-late 30s you should have got them out of your system. Your mates will no longer look on with amazed envy should you rock up to the pub with a 20-year old who doesn’t remember the Stars Wars prequels. Instead, they’ll take you aside, quietly ask what the f**k is going on, and slip you the number for a therapist.

Coming to work hungover

Going out on the lash and stumbling into work hungover is fine for young people. Their jobs are largely irrelevant and they get paid so little they’ll barely notice if they get sacked. Try staggering into the office bleary-eyed, clearly still pissed and stinking of Doom Bar in your 30s though and the reaction is less likely to be ‘A few bevvies on a school night? Nice one!’ and more ‘The first step to recovery is admitting you’ve got a problem’.

Having zero responsibilities

Nothing is cooler to a young person than answering to nobody except themselves. Conversely, the lack of relationship or career responsibilities strikes dread into the heart of everybody aged 30 and above. Why do they suddenly decide they like their job they hated a couple of years ago, and rush to find last-ditch partners who are dull but not noticeably deformed? Unfortunately after all this compromise in your 30s, the midlife crisis kicks in five years later, so you’re f**ked either way.

Talking about the glory days of school

Reliving that epic hat-trick you scored in Year Nine or the time you told Mr Bates to f**k off during double English is tolerable at best in your 20s. If you’re still bringing these incidents up in your 30s though, consider your life a failure. All of your anecdotes should be about more exciting topics like your preferred motorway service station or the price of childcare. That’s what keeps a late 30s pub audience rapt! Sadly, that is not a joke.