Like any cultural artefact, methodologies change and evolve. So it is with grounded theory. It began life in 1967 in an innovative if rather idiosyncratic critique of existing research methodologies. Introduced by Glaser and Strauss in The Discovery of Grounded Theory  it has since developed in directions its authors did not anticipate and, at least in the case of Glaser did not much approve. In middle age (as it were) it has achieved the position of a comfortable and well established orthodoxy, attracting its own critics in turn. In this paper I discuss my own personal encounter with grounded theory and what lessons I think it offers qualitative analysis. I start by presuming that researchers rarely practice what they preach, for we struggle to understand what it is we do. How can grounded theory contribute to that understanding? It addresses some basic questions of analysis: how to start, how to proceed, when to stop. But on reflection the answers it offers are not as simple as they might seem. Accepting the resulting complexities may be the mark of a “grown-up” approach to analysis.