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.