Really the list should be called "Things I Could do to Make Myself Feel Like a Grown-Up, But Won't Do Because I'm Clinging To My Fleeting Youth by Watching Cbeebies With My Museli."

But highlighting inevitable failure in the title seems rather defeatist, and anyway, I've ticked one off this week.

So I'm not failing. I am a fifteenth of my way to becoming a bona fide grown-up, even if I am still using a Solo card.

It's a varied list, ranging from the relatively attainable "Learn what the Hoover attachments do", to the more challenging "find, woo, capture and marry semi-healthy member of male species, preferably with all own teeth".

I expect to have them all completed by the time Dennis Norden finally dies, which I believe gives me approximately 843 years.*

Though I've a sneaking suspicion that while an all-bread diet would finish you off before you can say "bloat", woman can in fact live on one hoover attachment alone and survive just fine.

But going to the cinema on your tod is, I think you'll all agree, a brave one.

Some of the most adulty adults, ones with Peter Storm fleeces and waterproof footwear and ISAs, still wouldn't dare go it alone.

Alone? People might think you're a paedophile. Or single.

Worse, a kindly family might do their charitable bit for the night by asking you to sit with them, like not being picked in PE and having to be partners with the teacher.

It's only a few slippery steps away from playing World of Warcraft and finding a wife on the internet, isn't it?

Quite possibly.

But then it's always fun to disarm the general public by being completely comfortable in your own solitude.

I like to think this is my intention every time I fall asleep on public transport.

First come the sporadic head-drops, then the open-mouthed snuffly noises, then usually some inappropriate contact with a nearby commuter… head on shoulder, head on their briefcase, whatever feels comfy.

I may even drool against the window, but hey, I'm being secure and complete as an individual.

It's easy to be secure and complete as an individual when you're semi-conscious ('insert politician of your choice here for obvious quip').

And think about it — when you're on your own, the cinema is just a big extension of your living room.

Nobody to take all the good Revels and leave you just with raisin ones, nobody to ask "What's he doing that for?" every three minutes as though you are the official oracle of film, and nobody to complain when you insist on staying right until the end of the credits, just in case there's a funny out-take.

Nobody to look judgemental when your pick'n'mix costs the council tax of a small house in Swansea.

It's freedom of the sweetest kind.

I, however, took the freedom one step further this week with my first solo cinematic adventure.

Leaving work at midnight on Friday, in the kind of black mood where you stomp discarded chips into the pavement for the sheer hell of it, I stumbled across what I can only imagine was a gift from the city to me.

Maybe Cilla Black arranged it years ago in advance.

It was a free, late night, open air, SINGALONG showing of The Sound of Music.

I marched in without a care in the world, and I sang my troubles away (the perfect way to tick off number 15, as clearly nobody at a Sound of Music screening can ridicule you for being alone. Mockery is a privilege you give up when you put on the comedy wimple).

I booed the Nazis, I wept at Edelweiss, I climbed metaphorical mountains of grown-uppiness that I never knew existed.

Then I fell asleep on the tube home, and dreamt about Hoover attachments.

Lauren Bravo would like to state for legal reasons she does not in any way wish Mr Norden any harm.

On the contrary, she believes his startling longevity to be one of the reliable constants keeping her life in order, like Richard and Judy being married or salt and vinegar being the blue one (Walkers can stop being anarchic and get in line, thank you).

She hopes to still be watching It'll Be Alright on the Night 72 in her space pod far into the future, laughing over the same clip of the pooing Blue Peter elephant.

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