I have been 24 for five days now and I am still not dead. Considering tha massive panic attack strop I had coming home at some silly hour the night before after squealing at the Butlins red coat unconvincingly playing a sexy ghost-type person in Phantom of the Opera, this is quite impressive.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the combination of feeling totally Lilliputian having just returned to a theatre I hadn’t been in since I was about a foot and half shorter, but the idea of turning 24 made me flip out. I know people who are older than 24 who are cool, sensible, not-dead (as opposed to undead, natch) people. One of my best friends is 27. But somehow she carries off being 27. I, on the other hand, was unable to think of anything other than harp-playing hero Joanna Newsom, on her second miraculous album at my age. Or last year’s culprit, Brandon sodding Flowers, who’s had to have a new metal invented to describe his albums because platinum’s getting too cheap. I’ve never gibbered before, but I was fairly sure I was gibbering when I got home.

I opened some presents that my mum had sent me home with a few weeks ago. Nice to see she’s picking up my own thrifty habits, as they were all wrapped in paper that I’d originally bought for my brother’s birthday in August and had since been used (twice) for my Dad’s. Softly nestled in layers of tissue paper, was a plastic funnel.

“Is she trying to get you pregnant?” asked my housemate, rusty from lack of The L Word.

What do you do with a funnel? Well, yes, funnel stuff, but to my knowledge turning 24 hasn’t affected the several thousand pounds worth of reconstructive dental work currently enabling me to chew my own food. Anyway.

On the actual birthday, somewhere in between wide-eyed panic and cake, I went to Dans Le Noir in Clerkenwell for supper with the Random Birth Twin. The premise is you eat in the dark, served by partially sighted waiters.

I was saved from jumping off a cliff in misery at being old, by Film Joe’s sage words: “You’re the same age as Jack Bauer, and Jack Bauer kicks ass.”