Séamas O'Reilly: I've become less mature as I grow older

"For me, it’s the slow smattering of white overtaking the red hair at my temples, which might make other people look distinguished but makes me look like one of those Scottie dogs people refuse to put down"

Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

Since I wrote about death last week, it makes sense to work backwards to its most common cause. Aging isn’t something I really think about that often, except when I realise that it has happened to me. I have traditionally been a baby-faced sort of person – meaning, specifically, that I’ve looked younger than I am, as opposed to being one of those people who actually have baby’s faces. You know the type, the small features of an infant set inside a big doughy head that is slightly too large to accommodate them without comment. Junior ministers, trainee priests, that kind of thing.

“You don’t look 30!” people used to say to me, when I was thirty, and I used to take this as a badge of honour before I realised I was simply the only man they knew who still shaved every day. There’s also the fact that, as the last few penurious months has shown, a strangely large number of my friends are a bit older than I am.