One of the best gifts I have been given in recent times is a coffee mug from my friend Alison that is inscribed with the words: “What a year this week has been.”

It is a tongue-in-cheek reference that perfectly captures how every Monday morning, without fail, we convene to optimistically convince ourselves that the upcoming seven days will be smooth sailing - only for things to swiftly and predictably descend into mayhem.

Time can feel strangely elastic amid the unfolding chaos. It gallops yet oddly stands still. Has it been a week? A year? A millennia? While some “weeks” are definitely testing, there is thankfully always plenty of wry humour sprinkled in there too.

Not least lately, when it has felt like the universe is conspiring to serve up a volley of hilariously pointed reminders that I’m no longer a spring chicken. How so? Let me count the ways …

A new boiler

It comes to us all. Like the inevitability of death and taxes, at some stage, you will be told that your senescent boiler is on “a limited parts list”.

Soon you are shelling out thousands of pounds for an upgrade. Arguably worse than having to splash a chunk of cash for a metal box that sits in a cupboard is the dawning realisation that you’re actually excited about getting a new boiler.

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Something I realised much to my chagrin when I woke early on the morning that the work was due to be done. I giddily turned to my husband, beaming from ear to ear, and proclaimed, “It’s new boiler day!” like a kid at Christmas.

I’m saying this as someone who, until fairly recently, still thought of The Hive as a nightclub, rather than a smart home heating thermostat.

Replacement windows

Ah yes, this goes hand-in-hand with buying a new boiler. We have officially reached that juncture where the draught emanating from the poorly insulated living room window is sufficient to cause a chill-induced crick - a literal pain in the neck.

And if you thought the excitement over a new boiler was embarrassing, crank that up to 10 for the imminent arrival of replacement windows. Welp.

Varifocal lenses

I was at the opticians for a check-up last week and during my visit it was slipped into the conversation that it might be time for me to try a varifocal contact lens (or “multifocal” as they call it now in a seeming attempt to make the prospect sound less excruciatingly fuddy-duddy).

I left clutching a sample pack of said lenses and nursing a sizeable dent in my ego. How long until successfully managing to thread a needle or trimming my fingernails requires the same degree of luck as beating the house at a Las Vegas casino?

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Before you mention needing subtitles on the telly, that has already come to pass. Umm, does anyone else reckon there is an epidemic of mumbling on TV these days?

Supermarket music

You know those scenes in a film, where someone sits misty-eyed in an armchair, flicking through old photograph albums as they fondly reminisce about yesteryear, then the screen fades to a sepia-toned flashback of their younger days?

I had one of those moments when I found myself humming a familiar song. Sleeping Satellite by Tasmin Archer. While perusing dog food in Morrisons. Yep, when they start piping the songs of your youth through the speakers of supermarkets, the jig is up.

One minute you are listening to a brand-new tune on the crackly radio in your poster-plastered, teenage bedroom, the next 32 years have passed, and you are a middle-aged woman, standing beside a shelf of Pedigree Chum and Chappie, wondering where the time goes.