Lots of my peers are entering their 30s, which is, for obvious reasons, a strange age to inhabit. This is the decade that most people are expected to get married and have children and assume powerful positions in the workplace. One of my friends marked this dreaded-to-some milestone with pizza-making activities at Pizza Express – an age-related breakdown if there ever was one – while others have continued to celebrate like the robust freshers they once were.
I have enjoyed myself at these kinds of things because there is a shared bond that I have been encouraged to uphold. But when this pap-shot of Ellie Bamber recreating ’s 30th – she was shooting the model’s Noughties-set biopic in west London – began to circulate on the wires earlier this week, I yearned for how different 30 might have looked in the early Aughts. Back when the traditional mantles of adulthood – ie, having savings and owning a flat within relative distance of Zone 9 on the TfL map – were perhaps within easier reach.
Rich models there will always be, but the property ladder is now almost unscalable for poor uglies like me. Kate Moss held her now-infamous ‘The Beautiful And Damned’ celebration on 19 February 2004. The tabloids at the time speculated that the supermodel had been planning to charter a private jet to transport 75 guests to an “exclusive resort” in Jamaica where Anita Pallenberg and Rhys Ifans would take in a private performance from Primal Scream.
.. but what actually happ.