Fortysomethings: Why are we Generation Confused?

One day we’re normal and reasonably functioning members of society. The next we’re neurotic, raging paranoids who don’t know if we should be congratulated, commiserated with or just humanely locked up out of sight in a nice, tasteful Mrs Rochester loft conversion. Congratulations: it’s our fortieth birthday – or the ‘Big FOUR-O’, as everyone likes to tell us in deliberately loud stage whispers with appropriate hand signs. They wouldn’t like anybody not to know how grotesquely old and mockable we are. Welcome to the scary Big Person’s World.

It’s made more confusing because being in our forties isn’t what it was. Thirty years ago when our parents were the same age they seemed to know exactly what was expected of them and to do it much better. They didn’t see Middle Age as a death sentence but as an opportunity to get down and dirty with their herbaceous borders and to save wool. It was their turn to pass on the baton to the next generation – not to hang around Top Shop and scare teenage customers into thinking they were store detectives.

The problem is that, today, we lack convincing role-models and no one’s quite sure what acting your age at forty is any more. Is it about constantly re-inventing yourself like Madonna? Is it about still buying enough CDs to personally keep HMV solvent? Is it about feeling that shop assistants are ruder and that graffiti artists should at least learn to spell ‘fuck’?

Blame the sixties. Blame the ‘have it all’ eighties. Blame everyone’s rising expectations. Blame greater equality. It’s not really surprising that we’re the generation that can’t decide if we should be wowing them in the office or concentrating our efforts on being good parents – a conflict of interests that can lead to hoping no one notices that our shepherd in the school Nativity is wearing an unwashed John Lewis tea towel.

Because to be a fortysomething now is, literally, to be everything. We’re parents, step-parents, parents of second families, singletons, co-habitees, grandparents. We’re battling with babies, Bratz-crazed teenies and moody teenagers. We’re working 24/7. We’re being told we can still wear unsuitably youthful clothes and enjoy the White Stripes. We’re still having lots of sex of course – as befits the generation that likes to think it put the Joy into it. In fact, we’re behaving in a thoroughly confusing and embarrassing way to both a younger and older generation. It’s not surprising they’d much prefer it if we did some proper housework and home maintenance, as is our true destiny, and stopped making those funny movements while humming Coldplay songs.

Of course, few forties have intentions of passing on any batons yet. Though this isn’t to say that we can’t see the attractions of having long, restful, non-child-oriented holidays that don’t involve ours going down a flume in a Center Parc in February 1,894 times. And there are unquestionably things we know by our forties – about life, love, death and the correct plural of phenomenon – that make those in their twenties and thirties seem positively callow in comparison.

Middle age? Mid-youth? The beginning of wisdom? The beginning of botox? Most of us would just say plain bloody knackered actually and leave it at that.

All we can do is try not to behave too disgracefully and to act our true age, which as we all know is a perpetual eight (according to our parents), the new thirty (according to marketing departments) or at least ninety (according to our children). Er, enjoy.

Barbie at forty ...

‘Nobody told me being forty was going to be like this.

Like most of my sorority, I wasn’t looking too far in the future at that Hollywood High School graduation in 1978. Of course, I had always been quite mature for my years and people (I think we mean men here and unfortunately some feminists who should have known better) have often treated me as a sexual stereotype. People who know me would vouch that I was just an ordinary young Californian woman who had read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and realised she didn’t have much to worry about in that department.

But having graduated in Tennis Party Studies with Double Honours, like many of my peers I was faced with a plethora of choices about what I should be doing with the rest of my life. These included:

* Coffee morning hostess
* Ballerina
* Doctor
* McDonald’s worker
* Pilot
* Circus star
* Rock star
* Cheer leader
* Dinner party hostess
* Yoga instructor
* Astronaut
* Fashion model
* President
* Shopper
* Movie star

What was I supposed to do? It’s not really surprising that I decided to sample every one of them in my attempts to Have It All. This made it specially tough as, back then in the eighties, we were being told by Shirley ‘Superwoman’ Conran that life was too short to stuff a mushroom but, on the other hand, stuffing seemed to be the order of the day at all of the soignée dinner parties I was supposed to hold. At least being a famous astronaut enabled me to get away from this at times.

My boyfriend Ken and I had an on–off relationship for a number of years. He had asked me to marry him on several occasions, but the time had never felt right. Besides I was doing well in my chosen multiple careers and didn’t wish to be primarily known as The Person Who Washes Ken’s Lumberjack Shirt and Chinos. To be perfectly honest, as an extra in Dynasty (he was a waiter at Blake Carrington’s parties and once got to touch Joan Collins’ shoulder pad), Ken wasn’t earning a lot, and all my various salaries did create a certain imbalance in our relationship. We parted in 1996 when Ken went off into the Sierra Nevada to explore his ‘crisis of masculinity’ and discover his ‘inner stetson’, only slightly marred by his claim that I had lesbian tendencies.

I’d always been close to my nieces and nephews and, although I hadn’t discounted the idea of having children, with my extensive career portfolio and the long hours worked, having a child would have been a disaster. I think I just followed the zeitgeist and it didn’t seem to want to lead anywhere involving strawberry Calpol. But then it slowly dawned on me that my heroine Madonna – we’re nearly the same age – already had two children and a new one recently flown in from Africa and there was something in my life that wasn’t being satisfied even by one of my most recent careers as US ambassador. I began dating again.

I am currently three months pregnant at the age of forty-eight and dreading telling my boss, who I just know will say that I’m the person who had to go and have sex and screw the whole company. I forgot to tell you that the father is Ken – we had a rapprochement. I did some speed dating and guess who was the first person who didn’t hide in the toilet because he couldn’t take the pressure of being a celebrity’s boring partner as soon as he saw who I was? He is dreaming of organising a neighbourhood soccer team and owning a shed for the first time in his life. I am happy, I think, although worried that I won’t have an outfit for ‘Child Vomiting at Frequent Intervals That Will Also Have To Be Worn in Business Meeting’, but Ken thinks he may have an old fleece I can wear.’

Fortysomethings and cut-price CDS

At first you can’t believe your luck when you see that all your favourite groups and singers from the seventies and eighties are drastically reduced. But then grow depressed when you realise that no one else in the industrialised world wants to listen to songs from the Dr Strangely Strange back catalogue any more apart from you.

Fortysomethings and BBC 2

Apparently BBC2 is the TV station most likely to be viewed by the over-forties and quite honestly we’re not surprised. But maybe don’t tell anyone you turned over to watch Meerkat Manor because you thought (a) West Wing, with its overlapping dialogue, makes you think your hearing is going; (b) Lost is where your most cliched holiday nightmare ever meets The Famous Five Have a Wonderful Adventure on Kirrin Island; (c) Big Brother was the closest thing you had seen to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire since your last office Christmas party.

Fortysomethings and body piercing

Just as reason separates us from the animals, so horror at having parts of our body stapled with bits of metal and taking several hours to pass through airport security separates us from youth. If, under any circumstances, you still feel tempted, remind yourself to hang on in there as there’s always your first hip replacement to look forward to.

Fortysomethings and birthdays

For those who’ve had children, birthdays – sadly – can never be quite the same again. Whether it’s the shopping in Toys R Us, getting the party theme right or the cost, they tend nowadays unsurprisingly to trigger an allergic reaction of fear and loathing.

And, of course, when it comes to your own birthday, there are now plenty of depressing scenarios revolving around (a) your age – do you really wish to receive ‘humorous’ cards reminding you that your womb and other internal and external organs and pieces of your body are either shrinking or falling to earth? (b) the fact that you’ve been around so long and have enough gift toiletry sets to sink the QE2. Is there really anything else they can buy you?

Added to which, the unfortunate truth is that reaching your forties is highly amusing to everyone apart from yourself. You’re hardly a spring chicken, but on the other hand still have some miles to go before achieving anything approaching gravitas or having people actually respect you. You’re definitely on the up and up, but think of it as Shooter’s Hill or the highest village in Essex rather than anything for anyone to get very excited about. Eventually, don’t worry, you’ll get brownie points and hopefully something nice for having survived that long. But in the meantime, some like to remind you that now you’ve finally passed the point of no return you definitely deserve a present that allows you to draw attention to yourself.

Whether your present is in the form of a day’s hang-gliding (we heard you had a death wish), a Ray Mears Survival Day (we heard you liked road kill) or a luxurious spa day (you’re a middle-aged woman, goddammit, and we couldn‘t think what else to get you), they’re all felt to be excellent ways of celebrating your mid-life crisis. All you can do is ask yourself is, after forty or more years on this planet, do your friends and relatives really see you as a sad, strange person on a suicide mission or in desperate need of deep-pore cleansing? Er, yes, probably.

Favourite Forties Birthday Presents for Men

Buena Vista Social Club
Historical novels about Roman centurion serial killers
Atlas for when the sat nav doesn’t work
Nose and ear hair clippers
Weekend washbag
Greatest Ever Football Matches DVD
Car cleaning kit
Edinburgh Military Tattoo CD
Set of Romanian spanners
Golf ball soaps
Model vintage car
Socks with clocks on
Miniature golf set


Favourite Forties Birthday Presents for Women

Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits
Book with inspirational thoughts about the menopause
Aromatherapy starter kit
Joanna Harris novel about owning a chocolate shop in France
Trug set
Hyacinth to keep in your cupboard until next Christmas
M&S perfume
Teaspoon to start your collection
Pomander
Scented drawer liners
Gift toiletry set
Ice cream making set
Pashmina
Padded coat hangers
Rampant Rabbit vibrator with a chocolate

Fortysomething men and barbecues

It is expected that sooner or later the forties man will wish to purchase a barbecue. By succumbing to his ‘inner sausage-pricker’, he is answering a call that lies deep in the male psyche to have a burning pyre in his own back garden and to wear a plastic-bra-and-panties apron. After all, if he can no longer hunt, kill and maim, he can do the next best thing and perform violent acts upon a piece of marinated meat surrounded by his neighbours. This is, of course, provided he can actually light the barbecue and (a) it doesn’t rain; (b) the Force 11 gale subsides; (c) none of the vegetarians present will mind a nice bit of Angus steak.

Everyone compliments him on his ability to successfully burn food, while his partner, who has done the family cooking for twenty years and never received any praise, is a little put out and suggests he might like to try bringing his ‘transferable skills’ into the kitchen. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when he watches Ray Mears, and the barbecue becomes the new rockery as he moves on to roasting hedgehogs on a bonfire.

Fortysomethings and nostalgia

Don’t worry: nostalgia is a perfectly normal emotion at your age. You are expected to have distinct memories that can be easily triggered by all kinds of things, which may be rich, evocative or embarrassing, although chiefly the latter in your case. It’s true that many of your nostalgic memories are from the seventies and eighties, but just see this as terribly bad luck.

Remember …

Blue Peter: Whatever happened to the wonderful world of sticky-backed plastic, advent candle coat-hanger holders and tins with pipe spills? No, please don’t tell us – it’s too distressing. Or remind us where you were when Petra died.
Smash Hits: Jason. Kylie. Wham. Bananarama. More innocent times when everyone had pores and wore bandanas and it was OK.
Top of the Pops: Never the same once Pan’s People stopped dancing in unsuitable crotch-hugging hot pants made from old curtains that your dad liked watching.
Family holidays: When everyone went on a package holiday to Spain, while being advised to take water purifying tablets with them, and brought back bullfighting posters as presents.
Smash: Was it just you, or did Smash always taste more like real potato than the real thing?
Colour spectrum: This seemed simpler too: orange and brown in the seventies, while in the eighties we moved on to neon lime and jaundice lemon.
The Establishment: Remember that? At least people then didn’t have any illusions that there was such a thing as a ‘classless’ society and Che Guevara wasn’t advertising Smirnoff.
Feminism: At least when feminists reminded us that it was a ‘patriarchal, male-dominated, sexist society’ you didn’t have to worry about the conundrum of post-feminism and Jordan.
Sex: The Joy of Sex made it seem a lot less troublesome, knowing that if you didn’t follow the bearded man and the instructions below it would just be about the propagation of the species and something rather biological – as with your parents, of course.

Fortysomethings: Still kidding yourself.

Living thirty miles and a two-hour commute from a major city still means it’s a suburb.
The slippers you bought from M&S are only for occasional use.
You’re not actually humming the first three minutes of ‘The Four Seasons’ ad nauseam because you only ever listen to Classic FM.
You didn’t really want that promotion.
Claiming that you’ve turned forty for the fourth time because it sounds less traumatic than forty-three.
You don’t possess two (at least) of your parents’ most irritating habits.
Having sex once a fortnight because you’re both too tired and it’s the only time there isn’t a child in the bed is merely a temporary blip.
You only saw Ladies in Lavender by accident.
You’ll write a bestseller soon and will look like Joanna Trollope, only even thinner.

Fortysomethings and John Lewis

It comes to most of us in the end: a realisation that we only ever wanted to live in a world of limited choice where there are only two types of latte whisk and where nothing will go out of fashion because it was never totally in fashion in the first place, and where staff do seemed pleased to see you and not regard you as a serial shoplifter. And you can get everything you could possibly want in one store … and have a decent cup of tea at the end of it.

A definite sign of middle age? Turning into one’s parents? Not actually caring anymore what one’s children say? All of these, probably. But, sorry, it’s our life, and we can buy a seriously boring mahogany sideboard if we want to.

Fortysomethings and late Gap Years

While at one time people in their fifth decade seemed quite happy to go down the well-tended primrose path to peaceful oblivion, today’s more assertive generation isn’t going anywhere gently. After twenty-odd years in the workplace and the pressures of bringing up a family, you suddenly realise that you too want a Life Changing Adventure and to collapse on some sand in Thailand thinking you’re Leonardo di Caprio in The Beach.

Inevitably it will take a fair amount of time, at your age, to convince your corporate employer that ‘time out’ will be a ‘good thing’. After all, you’ll need to justify them not paying you for six months and offering your colleagues the pick of your job roles, not forgetting how you’ll be ‘adding value’ to the company and bringing back a whole range of exciting new skills.

Skills you can claim to be bringing back:

Strategic (I’ll have a much better overview of the universe and the place of four-hour petty cash meetings in it).
Leadership (I’ll actually have made my own decisions for once without another middle-aged doppelganger telling me what to do).
Empathy (I can sense that everybody thinks I’m having a nervous breakdown, but then what’s new – at least I’ll have a decent tan).
Creative (If I haven’t thought of an imaginative way to escape this place by the time I get back, I will have failed).

What not to say to corporate employers:

I want to swim with sharks because they’ll be less lethal than you.
I want to scream into the Samaria Gorge that you’re a bunch of f***** shits.
I want to talk to a monkey because they’ll be more stimulating than you.
I want to attend a voodoo ceremony and make sure I don’t miss out any of your names.

It’s only now you wonder what exactly you’re letting yourself in for. You are in your forties after all, and old enough to be the parent of other younger Gap Yearers. It is worth remembering, however, that in many developing countries you will be felt to be in the upper echelons age-wise and would normally either be an old age pensioner or else dead. Locals will either honour you as an elder as befits your advanced age or try to understand your reasons for travelling across half the world in order to sit on a plastic carrier bag in a tent and eat Snack Pots and tell people about your mild existential crisis as a result of your horrible line manager or how Xmas 2005 with your Surrey relatives brought things to a head. It may be best to say you only wanted a break – just try not to worry whether someone’s stolen your hole-punch back in the office or if you’re going to end up with the wobbly chair when you finally return.

Fortysomethings and dating

Many fortysomethings will have last dated seriously around twenty years ago. This was a time when Wham were number one and Dynasty and padded shoulders still ruled, and obviously this could leave some people thinking that wearing a day-glo ra-ra skirt and humming ’Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ are all that you still need to meet a suitable partner. For those who may need to get a little more real, we offer a beginner’s guide to modern dating:

Speed dating: Instead of just one person saying they’re going to the toilet and then exiting without paying for their drinks or saying goodbye, you’ll now have ten, you lucky thing.
Internet dating: At least it means when you actually meet someone, neither of you has any embarrassing things left to say, as they’ve probably been covered in sufficient depth already.
Friends Reunited: If you really think the person in your class you never wanted to see again and who’s been stalking you on-line for the past five years is now the person of your dreams, it’s up to you.
Office romances: Due to the long hours culture, we’re now more likely to have affairs with our colleagues. This isn’t very surprising when the only other people most of us see during our 24/7 week clean our desks or work in late night garages.
Sexual etiquette: It’s now more common to take off your leg warmers.
Same sex: You are now no longer required to wear leather shorts, look like someone out of the Village People and have a big bunch of keys, especially if you’re not currently the office janitor.

Fortysomething ailments

You’re quite likely to be afflicted by a wide range of new ailments, physical and psychological, all of which can be traced to your advancing years. The good news is that most can easily be cured by a brisk walk and never watching Desperate Housewives ever again.

Festival Ear: Condition chiefly brought about by not having attended a rock festival for over twenty years. Early signs include the comment ‘why is the music so loud, I don’t remember it being this ear-splitting when we were playing our nose flutes at Glastonbury in 1983. What’s wrong with today’s young people?’
Texter’s Finger: That funny way people over forty text, as if it might be dangerous to exceed two letters a minute, is a condition that is only likely to worsen over time and is best dealt with in the comfort of the sufferer’s own bedroom, where at least no one can make any more smart-arse comments.
Mistaken Identity: Potentially serious condition by which you believe you are actually much younger than you are. Ages can range from early thirties to as young as six, and can be brought on by a wide range of triggers from a quick lunchtime botox to someone telling you you’d like Second Life.
Dad Dancing: Male urge to flail limbs uncontrollably as if actually performing dance movements; usually reaches peak during Paul Weller’s ‘Wildwood’. Fortunately often more distressing for the bystander than the sufferer himself.
Phantom Limbs: Affects many men who can often feel one or both legs scoring the epoch-defying winning goal at the Cup Final, even though they themselves were rejected for the works team on the grounds of apparently having two artificial left feet.
Temporary Blindness: Traumatic condition usually brought on by sudden visit to an H&M and, even though it is a typical English summer, buying items that even Kate Moss might find too embarrassing.
Senior Moments: We‘re sure you‘d prefer to draw a veil over this one. If you can even remember where you put it, that is.

Fortysomethings: Being surprised at what you know

Being Surprised At What You Know

By the age of forty it’s easy to believe your brain cells have atrophied and that on a bad day you make Jade Goody sound like Albert Einstein on steroids. But it’s worth reminding yourself that you do in fact know a remarkable number of things, all completely unrelated and useless of course, but bound to impress any group of six-year-olds who are thinking of becoming pub quiz champions:

· The plural of ‘phenomenon’.
· Every number one record from 1970 to 1980.
· The correct use of the apostrophe.
· The right ‘its’.
· How to calculate swimming pool capacities on the basis of the number of saucepans of water needed.
· The rules for using a Bunsen burner.
· The creators of Crossroads.
· At least one medieval English monarch.
· The colours of the prism.
· The names of every Cup Final winner from 1985 to the present.
· At least six theories on what The Magic Roundabout is really meant to be about.
· How to address a Bishop.
· The correct use of ‘sincerely’ and ‘faithfully’ when writing unctuously to your bank manager about an overdraft.

Fortysomethings and Time Out

Do you say: (a) I’ll read it next week; (b) Oh, God, I think it’s in the cat’s litter tray; (c) Do I really want to be sitting in a room above a pub in the Archway while a Chilean theatre group does experimental things with a Brechtian sub-text and worry about muggers on the way home?

Fortysomethings and the Lands' End Catalogue

Mysteriously everyone receives this catalogue once they are forty, recognising that by this age people will prefer to try on strange fleece overgarments in the privacy of their own homes and preferably without mirrors. Written in a wholesome prose style where Classic FM meets Reader’s Digest, it depicts a world of orgasmic design modifications and exciting extra features.

Land’s End is, however, the glamour end of this market, and although, like its lesser rivals, the emphasis is on sub-zero or tropical temperatures – with a concentration on bright colours for mountain rescue purposes – it at least suggests that skiing and yachting, as opposed to rambling and waiting for public transport, may be on the cards for every fortysomething.

In fact there appears to be a recognition that the forties could be a time for fresh activities that until now no one had thought of. This includes a new range of clothing for ‘perfectly bridging the gap between living room and bedroom’, where winceyette-looking fleece outfits and duvet-warm moccasins enable you to lie dreamily in your hall with your pre-bedroom cup of cocoa and a strange look on your face. If, in your new-found languor, you catch yourself dropping off, then you will need to power-lounge in ‘snow-soft’ but hygienic Polartic blankets which fortunately inhibit the nightmare growth of odour-causing bacteria, obviously felt to lurk around everyone over forty. Most people like to buy at least one item, the more sophisticated usually going for a velveteen polo neck, so that they can pretend to be Austin Powers with other consenting adults in the privacy of their own back garden.

Fortysomethings: Personal Philosophy

By your age you should have one of these. Basically, it will suggest that if things hadn’t turned out this way, they would have turned out the other, with more than a touch of que sera sera and not forgetting je ne regrette rien, although there might be something in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you could only remember what it was.

Fortysomethings and Seventies Retro

It was bad enough surviving the original seventies; now you’re supposed to go into ecstasies at the latest seventies revival. This puts you in a dilemma: do you politely say that I had enough of those vomit-inducing chocolate orange colours and larva lamps the first time around, or cut your losses and let everyone know how retro and stylish they are? Because for many fortysomethings the seventies revival is like saying ‘come on, let’s relive my depressing adolescence in a front room in Kidderminster’ or ‘I really used to love the Crossroads Motel reception area with its psychedelic bile carpet and feel it is part of my inner psyche.’ It wasn’t an attractive look then, and is likely to lead to even more suicidal tendencies now. Only you know if you really want to have to spend half your total life living in a set from Abigail’s Party and trying not to giggle when callow younger people ask if you want to fondue. Just hope against hope that it’s not stripped pine again next.

Fortysomething achievements

It’s easy when the going gets tough and everyone seems to be blaming us for the horrible eighties – or for raising rude children – to forget that people in their forties have been responsible for many little-noticed social advances. The next time some smug baby boomer is talking their earlier generation up, let them know how it was yours and yours alone that:

· Encouraged the boom in Kumon tutors, so that no one, including your children, need ever know that you don’t understand quadratic equations, the basic laws of physics, or anything about history apart from Henry VIII’s wives.
· Made sure that rock festivals provided decent toilets instead of plague pits, so that even your teenage heavy metaller was grateful.
· Brought back Duran Duran from the dead.
· Talked up British seaside resorts as ideal for family holidays (even if it was basically because you couldn’t afford to go anywhere else).
· Made camping fashionable – er, ditto.
· Made the editor of Mojo appreciate that there was room for yet another feature on Eric Clapton or Neil Young’s health problems.
· Created a market for hen lit – why shouldn’t people know what happens beyond the post-partum divide.
· Became Yummy Mummies – why should all those corporate time management skills be wasted when you could be raising your child like a Goldman Sachs fast tracker?
· Saved Bagpuss from oblivion.

Fortysomethings: Life Skills

Your children are forever coming home from educational institutions apparently equipped to the hilt with these. At a time in your life when it’s easy to feel under assault from all sides, it’s good to remind yourself that you too have Life Skills. After all you must have had a life and there must be some perks resulting, mustn’t there, so just think positive. Don’t let anyone try and convince you otherwise. Just think positive. By simply doing your own Life Skills audit you may be surprised at the fascinating range you’ve gone and accumulated over the years.

A typical forties life skills profile:

Knowing what a teenager is thinking, even though she hasn’t spoken for two days.
Knowing what a parent is thinking even, though you haven’t spoken to them for two days
Able to set up a Freeview digital player so that at least you get the Shopping Channel and another which promises adult entertainment (even if it never works).
Knowing that if you turn a PC on and off enough times someone more technical than you will eventually point out that you’ve spilt ice cream and several Jammy Dodgers down your keyboard again.
Able to smile at people you don’t know with so much transparency you like to think you might be turning into Mother Theresa.
Able to reach a destination unaided by Sat Nav (er, mainly because you’re unable to use it).
Knowing that shop-bought mince pies always taste exactly the same as the other sort.

Fortysomethings and men's magazines

They’re either just a little embarrassing (puerile sex fantasies for thirteen-year-olds) or boring (puerile sex and car fantasies for thirteen-year-olds). This may suggest that your early FHM days of getting excited about the prospect of Gail Porter wearing half a nurse’s uniform may be coming to an end. In the meantime, you’re still just about able to have an opinion on the size of Jodie Marsh’s breasts, but you’re not sure for how much longer.

Fortysomethings and exercise

It suddenly hits you with a vengeance that you’re unfit and something has to be done. This is why fortysomethings and health clubs are such a wonderful marriage of convenience: each knows the other’s imperfections but are happy to overlook them, blaming either temporary amnesia or big financial incentives.

It’s only when you enter the changing rooms for the first time that you realise what they’ve been keeping from you: you have to take your clothes off in front of total strangers. Fortunately everyone is discreetly staring at a fishing programme on Sky and you are allowed to put on your gym kit without embarrassment. On the other hand, you worry why no one is looking at you. Is the sight of you with no clothes on actually that hideous and disturbing?

Of course, no one wants to worry you too much, which is why the health club loves to emphasise the feelgood side of fortysomething exercise; this includes being frothed-up in the jacuzzi, watching Murder She Wrote on the plasma screen as an excuse for a little light exercise-biking, and holding a water bottle at all times in order to suggest that you’re having a lifestyle.

Even the personal assessment isn’t too insulting, chiefly because no one’s actually going to say ‘you’re so fat and unattractive that we won’t be able to allow you to pay our exorbitantly priced direct debits’. Instead they do seem to be suggesting rather a lot of swimming, i.e. at least the water will support your great weight and keep you hidden as much as possible. Not to mention Aqua Aerobics – just in case you’ve never been part of a human tidal wave before and like wearing a float while frolicking in chlorine to Zorba’s Dance.

You wouldn’t say the gym itself is a surprise, but as a cross between your worst-ever school sports nightmares and what is never shown at Guantanamo Bay, no one can truthfully say that it is geared to the needs of the averagely unfit forty-year-old. If you thought it was embarrassing stripping in front of total strangers, try adding grunting, heavy breathing, gurning, involuntary dribbling and ten different ways of saying ‘I’m going to die’ to your bundle of tricks. Soon everyone will know your body as well as your partner does – many would say even more intimately after your unsuccessful pelvic thrust with the Swiss Ball. All you can do is remind yourself that you are actually paying for this – voluntarily.

Gym etiquette for fortysomethings:
Don’t tell a member of staff that you don’t appear to have a pulse. They will know you are a first-time fortysomething.
Ditto if you appear not to be burning any calories.
Always start off with the humiliatingly easy warm-up exercises, as it is an ego boost to know that you can at least do something.
But don’t embarrass yourself by punching the air and screaming ‘y-e-e-s-s’ as you assume the warm-up exercises are all you have to do.
Just because you actually know the words to Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, there is no need to mime to them while exercising. Leave this to her.
Don’t scream out ‘I’m feeling the burn!’ after two minutes on a glorified rocking horse.
Always keep your private parts covered up in the changing area. There will be a towel big enough, don’t worry.

The cover - at last!

Fortysomethings and Hawkshead clothes

If you haven’t already succumbed to the delights of the aforementioned catalogue, don’t worry, you will. For inconsiderable sums of money you can find yourself lost in a world of odd-shaped cagoules, walking socks, bobble hats and seriously practical jumpers, while Kendal Mint Cake is on offer to give you that elusive Chris Bonnington moment. Photos of happy and attractive fortysomethings sitting on dry stone walls in fluffy body warmers having thermos Cup-a-Soups only re-awaken primal and bucolic urges until now buried under the weight of family and career. And you can try it all on in the privacy of your own home without the embarrassment of entering Milletts and feeling everyone is whispering ‘elasticated plastic trousers’ to you.

It’s easy to convince yourself that (in the words of the copywriter) these elasticated gaiters are ‘timeless’ and ‘classic’, mainly because they have never been in fashion and have probably been seen by nauseated sheep in the Lake District for longer than they care to remember. But do bear in mind that you will only ever wear these clothes in a local recreation ground and everyone will look at you and your partner in matching cerise nylon ponchos and Alpine boots and wonder if you know something about global warming that they don’t. You, of course, will tell yourself that this is only the start. Expect to trade up before too long to Land’s End and wear stylish Hyannis Port yachting shorts and pasty-like loafers for a visit to Southwold.

Top ten Hawkshead items
for fortysomethings
Packable trousers
Alpine gilet
Polar fleece
Alpine boots
Body warmer
Weekender socks
Fleece gaiters
Trek shoes
Nylon poncho
Farmhouse chutney

Fortysomethings and Hawkshead clothes

If you haven’t already succumbed to the delights of the aforementioned catalogue, don’t worry, you will. For inconsiderable sums of money you can find yourself lost in a world of odd-shaped cagoules, walking socks, bobble hats and seriously practical jumpers, while Kendal Mint Cake is on offer to give you that elusive Chris Bonnington moment. Photos of happy and attractive fortysomethings sitting on dry stone walls in fluffy body warmers having thermos Cup-a-Soups only re-awaken primal and bucolic urges until now buried under the weight of family and career. And you can try it all on in the privacy of your own home without the embarrassment of entering Milletts and feeling everyone is whispering ‘elasticated plastic trousers’ to you.

It’s easy to convince yourself that (in the words of the copywriter) these elasticated gaiters are ‘timeless’ and ‘classic’, mainly because they have never been in fashion and have probably been seen by nauseated sheep in the Lake District for longer than they care to remember. But do bear in mind that you will only ever wear these clothes in a local recreation ground and everyone will look at you and your partner in matching cerise nylon ponchos and Alpine boots and wonder if you know something about global warming that they don’t. You, of course, will tell yourself that this is only the start. Expect to trade up before too long to Land’s End and wear stylish Hyannis Port yachting shorts and pasty-like loafers for a visit to Southwold.

Top ten Hawkshead items
for fortysomethings
Packable trousers
Alpine gilet
Polar fleece
Alpine boots
Body warmer
Weekender socks
Fleece gaiters
Trek shoes
Nylon poncho
Farmhouse chutney

Fortysomethings and parties

Is 11.45 pm too early to leave a party or not? Forty pluses have a whole raft of excuses up their sleeves and should never be ashamed of using them at any time. These include:

The baby sitter has to go home.
The au-pair and her boyfriend will be waiting up for us in our bed.
Our toddler likes to watch The Shopping Channel about now.
Our Goth teenager should have done a complete cycle in their Dracula cupboard by now and will be ready for bed.
I have this thing about having to touch everything in my bedroom at twelve o’clock exactly.
The cat gets fractious.
We haven’t had an argument yet, and if we include time for the one we always have on the way home, we need to leave now.

Anything, of course, rather than admitting the truth, that you are just plain bloody knackered again, don’t want to talk to another person about house prices and feel if you could somehow be turned into a perfectly symmetrical Waitrose pumpkin at midnight your life would be wonderfully changed for the better.

Fortysomethings and Brighton

The sine qua non test for every forty person – aka do I think getting a used condom up the wheels of my buggy outside Brighton Arts Club is impossibly glamorous or is it just another nail in the coffin of Western civilisation?

Once you would have loved the artistic demi-monde and its high alcohol and other substances-induced raffishness and decadence. Now you stay in an over-priced boutique hotel, can’t help noticing how everything’s terribly dirty, wonder how drinking wheat grass is going to change your life and if you ever really needed a felt handbag?

Congratulations, you’re over forty. Put it like this, your next step is probably a Jane Austen tour of Bath and a visit to an Edinburgh Woollen Mill Shop. It comes to us all.

Fortysomethings and body piercing

Just as reason separates us from the animals, so horror at having parts of our body stapled with bits of metal and taking several hours to pass through airport security separates us from youth. If, under any circumstances, you still feel tempted, remind yourself to hang on in there as there’s always your first hip replacement to look forward to.

Fortysomething men and Jeremy Clarkson

Patron saint for all those fortysomething men who feel grossly outnumbered and persecuted by (a) cyclists; (b) pedestrians; (c) drivers of Toyotas; (d) speed cameras; (e) those who make unflattering comments about tight jeans on men over forty, except they haven’t been able to put it in proper sentences until now.

No one else has articulated the male mid-life crisis with such wit and confidence in its need to turn every road into an open Utah salt pan test run with Bob Seger’s Night Moves as road anthem of choice. Those close to you are usually loath to say anything, however, in case you go and attack their family runabout or something.

Fortysomethings and Duran Duran

It’s easy to smirk at your mother’s obsession for all things Cliff Richard, but have you ever thought that your on-going fascination with Simon le Bon and the boys isn’t really all that different? When is iconic iconic and when is it just four not quite fat blokes in white suits and red bandanas who aren’t stupid and have suddenly realised that you’re a demographic timebomb?

Fortysomething men and Morrissey

For some fortysomething men, still the missing link between Oscar Wilde and God. In the eighties the lyrics of The Smiths gave their sensitive younger selves the courage to do something about their solipsism, finally leave their bedrooms and attend Smiths concerts. Still an adulatory, near-hysterical following of those for whom adulthood never really happened – which is a little worrying to say the least and may give a new meaning to the concept of emotional immaturity.

Fortysomethings and Middle England

There’s an unwritten assumption that by your advanced age you should be a fully signed-up member of this. Membership permits you to have certain inalienable rights and beliefs that are totally non-negotiable and everyone else should abide by them or else you will just have to send Simon Heffer around to give them a good seeing to.

You are expected to believe that:

· Judi Dench is a national treasure and has never made a bad film or appeared in a duff play.
· Antiques Roadshow says something about your inner psyche.
· Let them tamper with the Shipping News over your dead body.
· The BBC is Marxist.
· Jane Austen and the Vicar of Dibley are fully signed up members too.
· My Family is a situation comedy.
· The State should stop being nanny-like except when it comes to making sure that young people, gays, women and gypsies know that they are only really honorary members of society and should stop making a fuss.
· The Sixties are when Britain’s moral decline started.
· Anything else can be explained by mothers going to work.
· If you wave a copy of the Daily Mail at someone they will magically understand and apologise for being inadequate.
· You would like to carry around Lynn Truss in your handbag and she should correct the spelling of graffiti artists too while she’s at it.
· Ideally the National Trust should take over the running of the country and issue everyone with compulsory scented drawer liners.

So do you want to sign up, or don’t you?

Fortysomethings and mini-breaks

Aka child-free zone. The most carefully planned manoeuvre since the Battle of the Bulge for many fortysomethings, and totally not to be confused with the family holiday. Likely to be accompanied by wild fantasies and dreams of doing strange non-child-oriented things that will involve uninterrupted:

1. Sex
2. Reading
3. Adult conversations
4. Meals
5. Urination

Even if the airport is miles from the destination and the people dance in felt national costumes in your hotel foyer, this will not matter. It is enough that no one is telling you what they have done in the toilet or asking you what concrete is, for a minimum of two days.

Fortysomething Men and Men's Magazines

They’re either just a little embarrassing (puerile sex fantasies for thirteen-year-olds) or boring (puerile sex and car fantasies for thirteen-year-olds). This may suggest that your early FHM days of getting excited about the prospect of Gail Porter wearing half a nurse’s uniform may be coming to an end. In the meantime, you’re still just about able to have an opinion on the size of Jodie Marsh’s breasts, but you’re not sure for how much longer.

फोर्टysomethings ऎंड ग्ठे इनने

We’re part of the generation that put the permissive into society and that’s been taught to want everything now. But we’re also adults, parents, employees and responsible members of society. How do we square the two? The answer is, of course, that we don’t.

What we do have instead is a constant dialogue between our sensible inner adult and the untrammelled child/narcissist/hedonist that won’t take no for an answer. Our inner grown-up has a voice that’s a cross between an irritating life coach and one of those even more irritating but sensible British Rail pre-recorded safety announcements. We know what they’re saying makes sense, but would prefer to ignore them at our peril. There’s a vast range of situations where these conversations are never-ending and we just know this one will run and run.

Mid-life crisis
Inner Adult: You don’t think buying a brand new Harley Davidson is a rather obvious way of saying ‘I’m having a major mid-life crisis’?
You: Er, I thought it was better than buying a 4 x 4 and saying ‘I’m contributing to the environmental crisis.’ I think David Cameron should be rather proud of me.

Drinking too much
Inner Adult: It’s never sensible at your age to drink too much. Unlike twenty-year-olds, it takes you much longer to recover from the night before.
You: Well, I’m drinking much more slowly than I used to and this must be medically better, it stands to reason.

Pension
Inner Adult: You do realise you should be saving a greater proportion of your income now if you have any hope of a decently funded old age?
You: Er, I’m hoping to sell my old Syd Barrett LPs on e-Bay, alright. One of them was signed by his next-door neighbour.

Top Shop
Inner Adult: You don’t seriously think a range of clothes designed for size zero teenage models will fit you?
You: I can wear my daughter’s smock as a pashmina for one arm.

Fifty Quid Bloke in HMV
Inner Adult: Don’t you think it’s a bit profligate spending this amount of money every week on CDs and DVDs you don’t really need?
You: I don’t know how you can say this about Van der Graaf Generator’s unfairly ignored second album now available in triple gate folded de-luxe imported edition.

Office Christmas Party
Inner Adult: Is it sensible at your age to stand next to the photocopier wearing a Donna Summer disco glitter wig, and without any trousers, when you know someone is going to try and photocopy your genitals.
You: I tried to join the group discussing conditions on the M25 but they crowded me out, honest.

Being childless
Inner Adult: Doesn’t it worry you that still partying and leaving having children until your mid-forties is much too late?
You: No. At least I’ll be able to discuss the Scissor Sisters with them.

Middle England
Inner Adult: Isn’t it about time you settled down in a green and leafy place and expected everyone to listen to you as the representative voice of Britain?
You: I’d rather just watch Grumpy Old Men and Women and thank God I’m not a ranting loony yet, if that’s alright with you.

Work
Inner Adult: You should have a career action plan and work at your CV on a regular basis.
You: I did recently dress my Beanie Baby in Armani with matching briefcase. I think that was a good start, don’t you?

Parenting advice
Inner Adult: Listen to Supernanny and you might get some good tips. It looks like you could do with them.
You: I know that whatever I’m doing I’m probably doing it all wrong, but at least I’ll only have one person to blame, OK?