At the bar, I experienced my first moment of self-doubt and discomfort.
Should I go for my usual: a single gin and slimline tonic, or would I be committing an enormous faux pas?
Should I order a pint? If so, which one? What about snakebite? Do people still drink that anarchic concoction — equal parts cider and lager, sometimes with a sickly dash of blackcurrant cordial — that I remember from the Eighties?
I couldn't possibly order wine.
It would be ghastly; age and experience has burdened me with standards I simply cannot divest, plus I thought everyone would laugh. I might as well go all-out 'nanna' and order a Cinzano and lemonade or a sweet sherry.
In the end I went for a bottle of Peroni — a drink I usually enjoy ice-cold from a glass in the garden of my very middle-class, four-bedroom family home in North London.
Julia Lawrence (pictured) opens up about being a mature full-time undergraduate applicant, at 55 years old
Then came the really embarrassing part — producing my Student ID which granted me 20 per cent discount.
The bartender looked at my card, glanced quickly up at me, made no comment whatsoever, took my money .
. . and it was all over. I'd bought a round, in the Students' Union bar, as a university student, for the first time ever, aged 53.
Last year, I started a Bachelor of Arts course in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. I wasn't 'going back to college'— this is my first degree.
Like the singer Adele, who confessed recently that, at the age of 34, with £164 million in the bank, she's planning to take time out in 2025 to do an English Literature degree, I decided to take a step back from my job as an editor at this newspaper and amour xxx angels set myself a new challenge.
We're part of a growing trend: this year Ucas data shows mature full-time undergraduate applicants rising by 24 per cent to 96,390 — an extra 18,540 students.
Adele told an interviewer that she regretted not going to university, and I'm with her on that point.
It is, without doubt, one of the biggest regrets of my life that I didn't go at the 'right' age of 18.
So why didn't I? Well, it wasn't really the done thing in my family. University was for 'the other lot'. We went out to work.
I grew up in a largely working-class area of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, and attended the local comprehensive, where expectations were low.
Julia grew up in a largely working-class area of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and attended a local comprehensive
Of course, there were exceptions.
A few students from my school got into Oxford and Cambridge, but their parents were teachers, doctors or aspirational types who worked in the City who, themselves, had been educated to a high level. My parents, although very bright, had both left school at 16.
I can't put the blame entirely on others, though.
In truth, I didn't work hard enough or get the grades to go to a good university. I was far more interested in sneaking off to gigs and going to parties than studying.
Plus, it was much rarer for students to go to university back then. I sat my A-levels in 1986, when only 15 per cent stayed in full-time education after the age of 18.
During his time in office, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair set a target for the proportion to rise to 50 per cent — a landmark figure which was achieved in 2019.
I was lucky enough to be accepted into the National Council for the Training of Journalists college, which involved a year's study, after which I became indentured to a local newspaper and qualified two years later.
I never felt I'd sold myself short.
Virtually everyone I knew then had arrived via this route. Plus, we were young, sociable, and solvent, so there was a lot of fun to be had.
The chip on my shoulder arrived a few years later, when I ventured into national newspapers and magazines, where I met many people who'd been to public schools and good universities.