"The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence and obsolescence..."

Adult life is a scary thing. I've been an adult for around a year and a quarter now and I couldn't be more terrified if I were shipped out to fight in Iraq with nothing but a toothpick and a copy of 'The Express' (I guess that's not far off the modern British army's armaments). Life as an adult is confusing, fraught with worries and stress and centered largely around whether or not you have enough money to buy this Wispa or whether you should save it for an extra five minutes worth of electricity. Call me melodramatic and pretentious, but in my own small way I've been confronted with the real world and I have to tell you it scares the shit out of me. I don't like it. I have a house that I have to pay for and look after, I have a future that has to be worked towards beyond whether or not I get more than eight out of ten in my French vocabulary tests and I've come face to face with the realities of modern life. Upon visiting Barcelona recently I was propositioned by a prostitute and offered drugs within five minutes of stepping outside the safety of my youth hostel. Had I been ten years younger I would have been unlikely to have been offered so much as a lolly and a toy dinosaur, if I had been allowed out beyond seven 'o' clock at all.

And that's why the topic of my blog today is childhood. I'm sure I'm not the only one who, confronted with the way the world can be, retreats into a corner with a teddy, sucks his thumb and reminisces on what it was like to be a few years younger and without a care in the world beyond when the next Pokemon game comes out and whether my Mum will buy it for my birthday. Perhaps I am. But I like to think we're all a bit nostalgic for that lost innocence, and just for a few short paragraphs I'm going to revel in it rather than feel ashamed. Who knows, I might even make a car out of Lego or a fort out of cardboard boxes in the process.

Being really little must be ace. You can't be that conscious of it when you've got one hand in a plant pot and the other picking sweetcorn out of your nose, but it must be an epic time of life. I wish I could learn to walk again. There's something in the self-confident yet almost entirely uncoordinated walk of a small child that boasts of having conquered the greatest hurdle of them all and remained unscathed beyond the odd bump to the face as you trip over a discarded Mr Potato head. It's somewhat similar to the strut of a successful businessman actually, and when you think about it the comparison isn't too big a leap of the imagination; both use speech that no one understands but themselves and throw a tantrum when, whether because of a caring mother or government restrictions, they're not allowed to take a risk that's beyond their capabilities.

And then being, say, 10 must be really cool as well. My little sister's 11 now and has just started secondary school (I feel old just thinking about it; I remember when she used to run around the house wearing no more than a hair bobble and shrieking like Amy Winehouse after a particularly heavy night) but back when she was 10 she was the queen of her world and loved every minute of it. You're old enough that you're at the top of your school, you're a politician of the playground and lord of the lunch queue and yet have the prospect of secondary school, with the promise of Bunsen burners and cutting up a sheep's eye, looming ahead of you full of excitement and anticipation. And on top of that you can still watch Spongebob, find it funny and no one thinks you're emotionally immature. Brilliant.

Even being 13 or 14 is pretty cool. Girls are now no longer diseased and are actually starting to get attractive (before you reach for the phone to call social services I speak from the perspective of a 14 year old here). You can now go out with them and, joy of joys, you might even snog one on the back of a bus! You're old enough to pick on someone smaller than you at school, but not quite big enough to have spare any kind of thought for things that matter. Jesus, when I was that age we had SATs to worry about; kids don't even have those these days the lucky gits!

You have to question at what point did life switch on. When did that innocence disappear, where the only money you had to worry about was your £1.50 worth of lunch money and things such as sex, drugs and alcohol were things you only heard about when they were in a song or when some lads at the back of the class would shout them out to annoy the teacher and snigger? When did the world start to take on darker shades? When did you stop having to ignore them and start having to care about them? As I have said more than once in these blogs I don't intend to come up with answers, and it's a damn good thing, because on this occasion I haven't the foggiest what the truth is. All I know is that I still have my gameboy and I'm going to play on it.

I will, however, shut the door when I do it.