Never mind the seven signs of ageing, there are eight ways to tell that you�ve become a grown-up Author Lucy Mangan ticks off the list

ADMITTEDLY, our generation manages to put it off for longer than any other in history, but at some point we all have to grow up. We can postpone the traditional markers of maturity by getting married, buying property and having children later than our mothers and grandmothers would have dreamed possible, taking sabbaticals from work whenever we have a bit of money saved, filling our 20s and even up to our late, late 30s with fun, frolics and friends instead of adult burdens and responsibilities, but eventually we must succumb.

So when do you finally become a woman, an honest-to-God, no-getting-away-from-it grown-up? Well, there is actually a checklist You find your first honest-to-God wrinkle This is preceded by years of increasingly anxious inspection of your face in unflattering bathroom light, during which time you begin to realise that, for all your moaning and groaning during your teenage years, you always knew, deep down, that the mirror was your friend. Yes, you saw spots and pores that spewed more oil than Kuwait and a face that was painfully unlike Debbie Harry's or Sheena Easton's, but you knew, in your heart of hearts, that the former flaws were just temporary aberrations skittering across your springy young face and the latter was something you could learn to live with.

Cut to 20 years later and the basic material is starting to give you sleepless nights. The genuine bloom went off in your 20s, but now you can't even fake it with shimmery powders, daily exfoliants and sticks of subtle shine swept across your once naturally glowing cheeks. Partly this is because your epidermis stubbornly resists revivification, preferring instead to devote its energies to developing incipient crow's feet, tiredness lines that don't quite disappear after a good night's sleep and a certain burgeoning whiff of death and decay. And partly it is because, frankly, you can no longer be frigging arsed.

I exaggerate about the death and decay aspect, of course. Most of this perceived corruption in your 30s is just in your head. But you also know that the reality is, as they say in Trainspotting of an impending heroin withdrawal, in the f***ing post for sure. It is that realisation that marks the beginning of your long-awaited adulthood and a gradual but increasing avoidance of mirrors and other reflective surfaces.

You turn into your mother It may be hand gestures or pained facial expressions. It may be the sudden desire to enforce the insane and illogical rules that she once held so dear. It may be the unexpected emergence of phrases that have lain dormant in your brain since childhood but one day start tripping off your tongue as if they have just been waiting for the right moment to emerge. "Am I talking to myself?", "I'm not doing this for the good of my health, you know" and "You treat this place like a hotel" are three that have caught many a girl unawares, but you will have numerous others of your own, particular to just you and your distaff relations, hovering in the dim outskirts of your mind, biding their time, just waiting to bound into the light and issue forth from suddenly stuttering and bloodless lips. Try to think of it as continuing an ancient and venerable tradition. If you start crying, you see, you'll never stop.

You get called madam' in shops The first time this happens, you look round, checking for the imperious dowager that the shop assistant has decided to serve instead of you. You look back. Light dawns. You see yourself for a moment through the girl's 17-year-old eyes, which is like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. You stifle the urge to reach down her throat and bring out her innards in your fist. The only way to deal with the situation is to smile graciously and imagine that she regards you with respect and awe, hope and aspiration.

You also start being referred to as "that lady" by children whose interest you have, for whatever unfathomable reason, piqued and who are now intent on pointing you out to their frankly uninterested mothers. It is, of course, even more disquieting when you realise that you are older than said mothers.

You become assertive You are in a shop. You are in a hurry. There are four people ahead of you in the queue, each with a purchase requiring more information and detailed discussion with the single serving shop assistant than would be necessary if the purchaser were in fact buying a pharmaceutical company from a multinational conglomerate. The shop assistant is cross-eyed with boredom and profoundly uncommitted to the concept of working for a living. She is moving at the speed of a snail tracking through molasses. At one point, you suspect she is actually going backwards. There are three other assistants standing nearby, one picking at her nails, one admiring herself in the mirror and the other gazing vacantly into space, possibly working on a simplified proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, possibly not. Quite probably the only useful thing they are doing is raising a neat philosophical point: if an assistant is not assisting, does she make a sound when you saw her off at the knees?

So you take a step forward out of the queue and say in a calm but indisputably raised voice: "Excuse me, but do you think one of you could help serve?" The blood pounds in your head, your world reels, you are flooded with the sudden fear that all over the high street shop assistants have sensed your words and are now sniffing the air like murderous hounds ready to hunt you down and tear you limb from daring limb. But this does not happen. Instead, one of the three stooges rolls her eyes, reluctantly detaches herself from the group and installs herself behind the till, where she serves with as bad a grace as has ever been seen since time began. But still, there are now two cashiers working where only one existed before.

Congratulations. You are now an adult.

You take pleasure in hanging the washing out You begin to find yourself taking a step back from the line when you have completed the job and feeling a deep, inexpressible satisfaction at the sight of towels and pillowcases flapping in the breeze. Ah, the healthful, old-fashioned, sun-bleaching, economical airiness of it all! The lovely smell it will have when you bring it in! You may even begin to nod sagely and congratulate yourself on the good drying weather. Only women feel this. There is no turning back to childhood now. It's a long, slow slide into the grave from here on out. Let's just hope it is flanked by gorgeous piles of freshly laundered, snowy-white linen when you get there.

You stop being able to drink alcohol One moment you are happily knocking back the booze with the best of them and shrugging off the results the next day with a swift coffee and bacon sandwich before starting to get ready for the next night's binge. The next, you are having one glass of champagne at someone's engagement party and spending the next day groaning for an ambulance and/or the sweet release of death.

Yes, falling alcohol tolerance is a sure sign that you are reaching maturity. It is your body's way of telling you that you are now officially old enough to cope with most social situations and times of stress without resorting to artificial aids and stimulants; that your liver is no longer as capable of regenerating itself after your mindless abuse as once it was; and that you should be making carefully thought-out, ideally procreatively aimed decisions about sex with sensible men and not falling into a gin-soaked bed with the best-looking bastard in the vicinity.

You start to look forward to a cup of tea This is closely related to the disappearance of alcohol from your life. Nature abhors a vacuum, so something must rush to fill the void. A lukewarm mug of PG Tips soon becomes the last word in sybaritic indulgence. Biscuits too take on the kind of luxurious aura you previously reserved for expensive weekends away in country house hotels, paid for by adoring merchant banker boyfriends. With any luck, you won't start to ponder how your life ever narrowed to this sharp and tragic point.

You insist on using coasters Do you now have furniture that you paid good money for, instead of rickety pieces of loading pallet cast off by your parents or left behind by previous tenants who did not want the stink of damp to penetrate the new one-bedroom flat they somehow scraped together the money to buy? Furniture that you want to protect from wear, tear and hot mugs of tea? Have you bought coasters? Do you use them? Do you force guests, smilingly but firmly, to use them when they visit? Do you think these are the actions of a flighty young miss, hellbent on reckless living, a creature of rash and juvenile impulse, careening through existence heedless of the morrow? Or do you think you might just have taken one giant leap down the path that leads inexorably to Reactionary Old Fart Towers?