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 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.

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 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.