A recent conversation turned into a bunch of admitted adults (and myself) each shamefully admitting, and discussing how none of us ‘felt like grown-ups yet’. The word ‘yet’ suggests that it’s not just some kind of Peter Pan Syndrome, finding it hard to admit one’s getting old. I wouldn’t mind getting old, if I really believed it. After all you go through your entire teenage years as if you’re in some sort of English remake of Big. All you ever want is to grow up.

Growth comes with so many benefits. Not only will you gain admittance to any cheap-ass, rusty-bolt, domino stack of a fairground ride you’re young enough to want to chance, the advantages of adulthood seem infinite. So you wait. You wait, you wish, you wonder. You stare (as a boy) at your balls every morning, searching for that elusive first hairy black saviour. Then when it finally arrives, parade it around the P.E. shower room like a sporting trophy. The actual advantages of age are much more than mere body hair.

Not living with my parents means I can stay up until whenever I want. I can eat ice-cream for breakfast. I can partake in masturbation without the need for a closed circuit television system. I can decide for myself what my hair looks like, and I can buy the clothes that I think look good. I can drive. I can vote. I can drink. I can smoke. Frankly, I’ve never had it better. Yet even though I have all of this, I still feel like a 12 year old boy, stood in the shower, searching around my ball sack for a curly friend. Still asking myself, ‘When will I become a man?’

What makes you feel like a grown-up?  Let’s make a list.

Moving out from your parents. Check

Get a job. Check.

Start a career. Nope.

Get married. Nope.

Start a family. Nope

So these are 5 of the main ones, and I’m only 40% through. Perhaps that gives me some idea of the problem. But there are plenty of other, smaller goals you can accomplish along the way. Enjoying your first Christmas away from your Parents’/’s house is one. Not done that. So what have I done.

One of the items on my list, that up until recently I would not have been able to tick off, is attend a dinner party. Sure it seems like such an easy, less life-changing thing to have to do than start a family, but it’s still in there. It’s not the size of the act that matters, it’s the size of how it makes you feel. And partaking in dinner parties is something I’ve only ever seen on TV and in films, and it’s always involved grown-ups. I would not only be attending a dinner party either, I’d be organising it! In the grown-up stakes, I’m practically Victor Meldrew.

So how was it? Fun. A lot of fun. More than one might expect. Yet I can’t explain why. The menu was a far less serious construction than a usual episode of Come Dine With Me. The initial idea was to make it a little fancier than the standard. Throughout the process, I was quickly made aware that all ‘fancier’ meant, was smaller. The first thing to go on there? Cupcakes.

Cupcakes, chocolate icing, and pink decorations. Presenting them with a concoction made from two plates and two egg cups but looking like something out of Doc. Brown’s workshop worked a charm. It didn’t seem to matter that every cake spending an internship under the tutelage of my fumbling fingers looked like the kind of thing Frankenstein’s monster might pull out from between his toes. Put them on a homemade two-tiered plate and they were fit for a Disney Princess.

Next up. Sandwiches. The fanciness kept on coming. Triangle cut, crustless, filled with cucumber. Very posh. Eating just one felt like flicking 10p into a tramp’s face and patronisingly shouting at him to be grateful for it.

Another dessert (‘You only had one dessert? Where are you from, Blackpool?!’) was the British-loved, Tennis loving partner of Cliff Richard, Strawberries and Cream. ‘Of course I whipped the cream myself Julian you beastly man! We’re not animals!’

With all this, as light as the table should have been, it still seemed a little bare. So came the introduction of miniature shepherds pies in ramekins. Topped off beautifully with side cups of minted peas and caramelised carrots. With this, I’ve finally learned the one rule of higher class meals. Two words. Every single part of a meal must include at least two words. Peas are Old Kent Road, Minted peas are Park Lane. Carrots are eaten by horses, Caramelise them, and I’ll speak to you.

After the meal of tiny triangular, crustless, cucumber sandwiches, miniature ramekin set shepherds pies with side minted peas and caramelised carrots, strawberries & cream, and iced, decorated cupcakes, the evening was topped off in an amazingly properly English grown-up style. Trivial Pursuit! Boys Vs Girls Trivial Pursuit no less, in which the (boys let the) girls win.

After this new experience, do I now feel like a grown-up? No. But then it may have been difficult to feel like a fair, respectable adult after throwing a packet of multicoloured cheese triangles across a room.