Meg

Life Something that realised on Tuesday but didn't want to deal with for a few days was that at thirty-two I'd reached a milestone. When Harry Met Sally... is one of my favourite films and something I've watched pretty much every year for about fifteen of them. I've been watching it since I was at school, and know it inside out. It was always and aspiration -- moving to New York and marrying Meg Ryan, sorry, becoming a journalist.

I've also known that at some point I will actually reach the Harry and Sally's age and at some point live past them -- even though I suppose I'll still always think of them as being old than me. And that was the milestone. All through the past few days I've been thinking about this scene when Sally's age is revealed, even though other than that it's unrelated to anything.

Sally: He just met her... She's supposed to be his transitional person, she's not supposed to be the one. All this time I've been saying that he didn't want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn't want to marry me. He didn't love me.
Harry: If you could take him back right now, would you?
Sally: No. But why didn't he want to marry me? What's the matter with me?
Harry: Nothing.
Sally: I'm difficult.
Harry: You're challenging.
Sally: I'm too structured, I'm completely closed off.
Harry: But in a good way.
Sally: No, no, no, I drove him away. And I'm gonna be forty.
Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.
Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like this big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie Chaplin had babies when he was 73.
Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

See? And her age is only mentioned in arithmetic. It's a great work of fiction and I shouldn't worry too much that my life isn't as sophisticated as this (hello again Peter Pan complex, leave your maturity at the cloakroom) -- but naturally I do. Watching again tonight I wondered what the teenage version of me would have thought had he known how much of a fantasy the film would actually turn out to be. Still at least there's still the journalism to look forward to.