So it’s a landmark birthday for me today in someways. It’s the last one before I hit the big 40. It’s just a date and all the extremely ancient people I know have been very positive about it and I psychologically know that it’s not that old.
However…
At what point do you stop considering yourself the roustabout youngster you once were? I remember as a student we held a mini wake for Elle Macpherson when she hit the unbelievably old age of 30 in 1994 (she didn’t turn up, despite the invite being sent via her best antipodean buddy Clive James). She was a supermodel, held up as a personification of beauty but she had turned 30. End of the road.
Ah, the stupidity of youth eh? Don’t blame me for my objectification of women, she was a supermodel and I hadn’t managed to get remotely near an actual woman at that point in my life. My 30th went past in a blur- I can’t even remember what we did but it was probably low key. I honestly don’t remember. We might have been abroad as we went through a phase BC (before children) of going away for my birthday- a city break in Paris, a trip to Norfolk or something like that.
I wonder though. At what point will I have to accept I’m not young any more? Thanks to the kids I already feel more tired than I should most of the time and have a lot more grey than I did even a year ago. I still play 5 aside once a week and joined the gym before Christmas but I get a lot more aches and pains than I used to. Mentally a lot of exuberance of youth has gone. I find myself more world weary than I did back then, more accepting of things, and less able to whip up sustained enthusiasm for anything.
Still, rather awesomely this fug has been offset by the arrival of a Sonos Play:1 for my birthday. This will sit in either the library or our bedroom (I haven’t decided yet) and provide background music when I’m reading a book or something. It’s funny, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the last 20 years, I don’t like quiet, I need a bit of music or something happening.