Mid-Life Crisis

Like a kid in a sweetshop

2007-09-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

It’s been many years since I felt this excited.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Paris to watch England play South Africa in the World Cup and I can hardly contain myself. I’ve already written three lists to make sure I don’t forget anything although quite why it takes that many lists for a three day trip is beyond me. Put it down to what feels like ‘night before Christmas’ excitement.

All of this is exaggerated by the fact that I’m heading to Paris with my best mate. He hasn’t been let off the leash for some months since he recently became a father for the second time. The idea of a two night sojourn to Paris with someone that knows me inside out and which also encompasses a game of rugby is almost too much pleasure.

This is piqued still further by the fact that it’s the Rugby World Cup – an event that takes place just once every four years and which may not return to Europe until 2019 by which time I’ll be too old to care and certainly to old to have two nights on the beers.

Further updates as they happen…

Weather with you

2007-09-06T08:34:00.001-07:00

Having just returned from an extremely relaxing break in Italy, it’s been remarkable totting up the number of texts I had from people moaning about the weather in Blightly. Apparently it hasn’t been all that wonderful.

Now to me, the idea of texting someone on holiday who’s clearly going to be having better weather borders on the masochistic. (In case you’re interested, it was 35+ most of the time). After all, the likely outcome is a text that reads something along the lines of “Sorry to hear it’s still raining. Weather here is amazing and we’re feeling very relaxed. See you soon.”

But it does serve to remind me once again of our obsession with weather. Given the increasing frequency of severe weather occurrences (which I think is the euphemism), I shall look forward to even more texts will I’m out of the country in the future.

Just not on

2007-07-31T02:57:00.001-07:00

How difficult can it be to spot a pregnant woman? Granted, in the first three or four months it can be slightly tricky but by around six months it’s pretty obvious. (Although I do recall once asking someone at a Christmas party when she was due to give birth. A sickening silence followed by tears told me that she had attacked the mince pies with too much gusto rather than being pregnant).

Given the obvious nature of someone more than six months pregnant, I wonder if someone can tell me why tube passengers think it OK to notice someone ‘in the family way’ and promptly return to reading their paper? Day after day, it seems to happen and no-one does the decent thing by giving up their seat.

But worse than that was a scene on the tube this morning. A pregnant lady got on at one door and was making for a seat quite close by. Someone else got on via a different door and literally ran for the same seat, all but barging the pregnant person out of the way. In the 25 years or so of using London Transport, I have never witnessed anything like that. What made it worse was that the person who made like an American Footballer was also female!

Now, clearly I have never been pregnant and cannot completely understand the shenanigans that go on inside the body. I do know, however, that it cannot be entirely comfortable carting around four or five pounds of baby plus an additional five or six pounds of ‘other stuff’. Having a seat on a packed and hot tube is the very least you might expect of your fellow human beings.

So next time you see someone pregnant, don’t pretend you haven’t seen them and return to your paper. Imagine what it would be like carrying five bags of sugar around your midriff. And then get off your lazy arse…

Just desserts

2007-07-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

Restaurants that have those pre-printed dessert menus with helpful pictures have always puzzled me. You know the ones – hollowed out oranges filled with orange sorbet and ‘raspberry bombes’ that look just a little rude. I mean, who in their right mind would order one of those? It’s not like the restaurant has gone to great lengths to make the dessert. They’ve rung up a food wholesaler and ordered them in large batches and been provided with the same menu that thousands of other restaurants are also handing out when the main courses are cleared away.

And the fact that the menus are laminated to make them easy to wipe clean is also intriguing. After all, there really can’t be many people who actually think ‘yum, I’ll have the Tia Maria ice cream in a Tia Maria look-alike bottle while my friend will have the hollowed out coconut filled with coconut ice cream.’ So given the lack of ordering, you wouldn’t have thought there’d be much call to wipe the menus clean.

Is this a sign of my age? Not really. I’d put it down to being a food snob were it not for the fact that the only time I tried one (the orange sorbet number) it came out so hard, not even a pick axe would have helped. After what felt like an eternity, it did eventually thaw enough to eat but the first spoonful was enough to tell me it was among the most disgusting things I had ever eaten.

The moral in the story is, like the Grange Hill Kids told us many years ago: “just say no”.

It must be my age

2007-07-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

I’m partial to a jar or two every once in a while. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy the experience. There’s nothing quite like a glass of wine, or a stiff Vodka and Tonic, to take the edge of a stressful day. Lately, though, I’ve found that not only do I find drinking less enjoyable but also the effects of drinking are starting to make me wonder why I bother.

During my university days, hangovers were non-existent; they were what old people experienced. I could drink substantial quantities and not worry about it next day. I think that was partly because I stayed in bed until midday and therefore had the restorative effects of sleep to ward off the hangover.

That cloak of invincibility stayed with me through my twenties and most of my thirties. I could drink large volume and do so late into the night and still be able to function at work the next day.

But lately, the hangovers have reached epidemic proportions. It’s no longer a matter of a can of Coke to make things right in the world. Now it has to be a full English breakfast, several cans of coke, a cup of coffee and a two hour snooze. And even then I have trouble remembering my name.

I’m guessing this has something to do with my age because others who’ve reached the 40 milestone report similar experiences.

It hardly bodes well for my drinking credentials but I guess I should take comfort in the fact that it does happen to us all. I remember my Gran getting more than a little tipsy on a glass of sherry and a glass of sweet white wine one Christmas lunch several years ago.
I suppose there’s a bright side. The money I used to spend on alcohol can now be put to better use – perhaps saving for a pair of slippers and a pipe that I can use as I doze by the fire after my single pint of bitter. Joy

To gym or not to gym

2007-07-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently, one of the many advantages of getting older is that physical looks become less important. In place of toned abs and shoulders that are broader than one’s waist comes wisdom, wit and intellect. It seems that middle age should be the place where what’s inside really does count for more than what’s on the outside.

Piffle. Absolute piffle. Or at least that’s my conclusion based on a random sample of people at my local gym.

When I made the odd foray to the gym during my late twenties, it was full of people my age, each trying to lift more weights than each other. Ten years on and it’s still full of people like me still trying to out-lift each other. The point is that the gym is the preserve of late-thirty and forty year-olds rather than those in their twenties.

The depressing thing about this is that we all seem to have reached the same conclusion: simply letting nature take its course is not an option. With the job market remaining super competitive and all of us in fear of someone younger (and no doubt better looking) replacing us, staying as fit as possible is the depressing truth. Which explains why the average age of gyms seems to be on the rise.

It’s alright for those in their twenties, after all they still have an active metabolism. I, on the other hand, have the knowledge that it takes longer to get fit and loose weight than when I was younger but perversely only takes half the time to become a porker again.

So, what about wit, intellect and wisdom? Try this experiment if you really want to see how valued they are: 1) find a bar with a high percentage of single women; 2) approach one of them; 3) if she hasn’t pissed her self laughing or called you a dirty old man, start a conversation; 4) ask her about her views on neoclassical endogenous economics and see her first look blank, then panic and then turn on her high heels and march back to her mates. Simply put, it’s not about what’s up top.

And sadly, the same applies to the workplace too

Strawberry Moon

2007-07-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Is it me or do strawberries not have the same taste they did 20 or 30 years ago? I don’t want to sound like a ‘Wenwe’ – one of those really boring people who think that things were better when they were kids – but strawberries tasted like strawberries when I was little.

Nowadays, they taste like some indecipherable, homogenous blob of nothing that looks a bit like strawberries.

Apart from that one you eat close to the end of the punnet which tastes sweet and fresh and, well, of strawberries.

Music to my ears

2007-07-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Those that know me will wholeheartedly agree with the comment that I have pretty lousy taste in music. It could hardly be much else when the last gig I went to was the Rolling Stones. That might carry kudos in some quarters but the fact that it was the Wheels of Steel tour in 1990 or thereabouts probably tells its own story.

Now the reason I mention this is that for some time now, I’ve had a hideous feeling that I’m not just getting old but that I am already old – a thought driven by how little I seem to know about the contemporary music scene. Or what the ‘kids’ are listening to. Sure, I listen to the radio but I’m not sure that Radio FiveLive is really going to help improve my musical education. Nor do I think the occasional blast of Heart FM is going to make much difference.

The point of all is this that I work close to the Astoria and a quick look at today’s line up confirms my worst fears. Who on earth are Skinny Puppy? Or BAJM? They sound more like brands of alco-pops than proper bands. Is Hellogoodbye really the name of a band or a witty reply to one of my worse chat up lines?

It’s yet more confirmation – if any were needed – that while middle age doesn’t officially begin until 40, I’ve been happily wallowing in it for some time.

Volume 10

2007-07-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

Not as in the 10th volume of literary work (you’ll be relieved to hear) but as in the volume at which my telly now seems to be set. I’m not sure when it started but without the volume set at Old Git level, I have real trouble hearing anything at all. I suspect it’s my hearing although at times my conspiracy gene kicks in and I think the powers-that-be are trying to con me into taking some very expensive hearing tests.

The irony is that despite my aural difficulties with the television, I can hear an over-loud MP3 player at fifty paces in a noisy tube carriage or some drunk half a mile away stumbling over a misplaced rubbish bin.

And when it comes to babies on planes, it doesn’t matter how far away I’m sat - I can hear with way too much clarity every last cry. Particularly when it’s 3am and I’m trying to coax myself into some alcohol-induced sleep.

Which is kind of idiotic because in watching a film to fill the time between the drinks trolley making its rounds, I’ve had the volume set at level 10.

Hairy schadenfreude

2007-07-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently, you’re supposed to loose your hair when middle age sets in. It’s a very obvious sign that you’re no longer in the first flush of youth. It’s also an external sign that you’re more mature and wiser too.

So explain the fact that while 40 is fast approaching (359 days to go), I still have a full set of hair?

The vast majority of my friends are loosing their hair as if baldness really is a fashion statement and yet mine still seems to be very firmly rooted to the spot, so to speak. In fact, not only is it not falling out, some of it seems to have taken root in other areas of my anatomy. My back seems to have become something akin to a bear rug, while my ears have started looking ridiculous with hair all over the place. So bad is the sprouting in my ears that when I get my hair cut, they even run the razor over them to get rid of the fluff.

Pah!

Still, I suppose I shouldn’t complain. At least with a full set of hair, I don’t have to worry unduly about a balding head in the sun, nor do I have to worry about loosing even more heat through my head than usual. But what does concern me is my Dad. He’s been bald or nearly bald ever since I can remember and yet has the hairiest ears and back I’ve ever seen. It’s like he’s got the Amazon rainforest tucked into his shirt with a mini-Black Forest emerging from his ears. Is that going to be my fate? Surely no woman on earth will really fancy someone looking like that?

At least for him, he gets to make jokes about how his hair is migrating south. I can only stare at the mirror each morning and wonder how I can trim the hair in my ear without taking yet another lump out of it. (By the way, I don’t recommend nail scissors. When you miss, as inevitably you do at some point, it’s really, really painful and the blood keeps pouring).

Whilst at the mirror, I also stare for minutes at a time at the hair sprouting from my ears. It’s a time when I contemplate whether it would be too vain, too painful and too expensive to get the thing waxed. Thoughts of electrolysis also come to my mind during these mirror-staring moments but that really is way too weird, surely?

So for now, I’m left to contemplate the excess hair with which my body seems to be tormenting me. Is it a sign of things to come? Is it revenge for the past nearly-40 years? Or is your body having the biggest laugh possible at your expense? It seems to me the latter because at a point when finances are a little easier, you are wiser and more mature (in theory at least) and therefore perhaps of greater interest to the opposite sex, your body decides it should do something that will make you as repulsive as possible.

And if that’s not a case of schadefreude, I don’t know what is.

The joys of an aging body

2007-06-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve know for sometime that I’ve been getting older. My body has taken great joy in reminding me of the fact for sometime now. And it does so in a variety of humorous and not so humorous ways, and I’m not talking about one’s chest sliding south.

It’s the little things that only occur to you over time and gradually build up a picture of an ageing body. For instance, loosing weight seems to take months rather than weeks and hangovers rage for days instead of a few hours.

But the bit that really gets me is grey hair. Now, I’ve been going grey for years but when you’re beard starts showing grey you know things are changing rapidly. It’s even meant I’ve started shaving more regularly. How vein is that? But the real shocker is when your body hair goes grey. So discovering a number of grey hairs on my chest was a real eye-opener and caused another of those ‘Am I really that old?’ self-conversations.

In theory at least, grey hair is indicative or someone with more wisdom. Indeed, given I was blessed with a very youthful face, I’d longed for grey hair when I first started working. Be careful for what you wish because I now do a passable impression of someone who’s had a run in with a bag of flour.

At least the grey body hair is shaveable / hideable.
I just wonder for how much longer though

2007-06-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Birthdays come and birthdays go. Most years they pass, to considerable relief, painlessly. This year, though, is different. I am now entering my 39th year and it’s just 362 days until I’m 40.

Eeek.

It seems SUCH a big number now and, like rain in Wimbledon fortnight, it’s unavoidable.

So as I approach the entry point to middle age, I wanted to capture my final year of being the right side of old.