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.