Letter: Mixing it up

Maureen Freely asks "What's wrong with being a grown-up anyway?" (Real Life, 23 November). Her answer seems to be nothing - if you do it gracefully, adapt and, when you hit 30, jettison notions of dancing, clubbing, joining a gym or going to Glastonbury.

At 33 I manage to do my own thinking, am happy with myself and can relax among academics, medics or unemployed women. I pay my mortgage, have completed a PhD, hold down an interesting job, plant hanging baskets, travel to work through vicious traffic and invite friends to dinner. I know I am a grown-up. On top of this I also go dancing, visit the gym, pay too much money to go to clubs, run four miles and drink Bloody Marys. Sometimes I go to Womad.

Freely totally misses the point that many thirty- and fortysomethings achieve this combination of different facets of life, and contentment, without losing sight of or making fools of themselves, and without talking about it.

Joanne Hartland

Bath