The merging of two generations (and an idiot in the pub)

"You two looked like you were in a pretty deep conversation earlier - so tell me, are you going into a relationship, or just coming out of one?"

"Ha! Neither. I'm happily single and have been for about a year or so. It's all good." I replied, before extolling the virtues of a single life in London.

The two Canadians had joined myself and a friend at our table after the football. They'd shuffled over as the big screens rolled up, bought a round of drinks; we imparted our London knowledge and now the conversation had moved on. Somehow, the subject of age came up. I told one of them mine, and was completely thrown by what came next.

"Isn't 27 a little old to be single?"
"Pardon? Too old?"
"Yeah, like if you want to have kids and stuff - isn't 27 a bit old to still be single?"

Once I'd picked my jaw up off the floor and provided a response which didn't include nearly as many swear words as I'd have liked in retrospect, it wasn't long before I was wishing them a good night, and making my excuses to go home.

The next morning, his question was the first thing to come to mind.

Too old?

"Oh, that's just the Canadians" reassured the PIB when I regaled her with the story later on, "When we went away, our hotel was full of them. They'd all married by 21, and for the most part divorced by 30. They do things earlier, having families and the like. London's just...well, it's just different for us."

Right though she may be, the whole thing forced me to acknowledge something that has been creeping around my mind for a while now: that society's changing, and our generation are the guinea pigs.

We're a generation living in rented accommodation, with friends instead of other halves, or even still at home with parents. We're working hard at our careers and relationships come second, we travel the world after university instead of beginning the hunt for a job, often not finding a permanent one until well into our mid twenties. Even in our careers we're feeling our way: the jobs we've got now didn't exist when we started uni.

Marriage will happen - at some point - but not now, not yet, not while there's fun to be had. And kids? As a 27 year old girl who spends her nights surrounded by mostly single friends, and mornings in bed with a hangover and the vague but cheering memories from the night before, the idea of being responsible for a child is nothing short of terrifying.

Our lives are different to the ones we grew up expecting. Somewhere in the depths of 1996, there's a gaggle of thirteen year olds who thought we'd be married with kids by now - or at least paired with someone who wanted that with us - but instead, we're nowhere close.

For the most part, we're happy. We're doing well. We're well adjusted, fun to be around, brimming with experiences and stories to tell. We look at those who settled down young and feel bad: they're the ones missing out, not us.

However, there's no denying it, we've had our long term relationships, they've broken up and now we're single again. But it's different this time around.

There's an edge to it; a desperation creeping in, a scrabble to locate the nearest hot man in any given vicinity.

If you squint and look around the pub at 11pm on a Saturday night, over at the group of girls laughing, dancing, hugging, chatting and doing shots, you can sometimes see and hear the point at which the old generation, the one that told us we'd be settled by 30, is meeting this new one; where you can have it all - but later, and detect a bit of panic. It's in our conversations and the back of our minds; the way we search the people at the bar.

This doing it later stuff, it's a nice idea in our heads, and we're doing it with gusto. But our hearts haven't quite caught up yet.

So, are we too old? No, we're not too old. We don't look it, we don't feel it, we don't realise it.

But if by some stretch of the imagination it turns out we are, then we'll surely be the first generation to know about it.