Top tips for halfway in life. And number one is tweezers
When you turn 40, like I do today, there are a few things you need to know. First, the best place for plucking the random hairs that seem to sprout overnight under your nose or on your chin is the front seat of the car.
Whether you are waiting at traffic lights, hanging around a shopping centre car park to pick someone up or taking five minutes to yourself before you head to or from work, the natural light and the superior, adjustable mirror on the visor means you can whip out the tweezers (which should always be carried in the handbag or in the car) and take years off yourself. It will, at least, stop people staring at that hair when they are speaking to you.
The second top tip when turning 40 is to realise that unless you’re going to go on a drastic, food refusing style diet, you’re probably not going to get into that size ten top, which you bought for a steal in a fancy store five years ago because you swore that you would this time, not like the last time, stick to the diet that promises to ‘reshape your body’.
It’s time to throw the size ten top and the wonder diets away and enjoy the odd treat while keeping one eye on the fact that middle age, and all the medical problems it entails, is now upon you and it’s perhaps time to not smoke/drink/ eat like you’re 21 any more.
And tip 2B: at 40, you have to make a decision between face or figure. Go ahead and lose the six stone to get yourself into that top, but your face won’t thank you for it. Out will pop the lines, creases, wrinkles and crows’ feet that had been kept somewhat at bay thanks to that layer of flab on your face. Lose the flab and get ready to welcome the wrinkles.
Just in case you’re wondering, I made the face decision a long time ago. The figure was never good and I’ve accepted it’s never going to get any better. But, thank God, my career in modelling was fleeting to the point of being non-existent.
Thirdly, turning 40 brings its advantages. I’m no longer afraid to speak up (‘you never were’, the Husband says) and no longer in thrall to people who always say they know better.
You get to be comfortable in your own opinions, because while some of them have been modified over the years, the core ones have not changed.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone has to hear your opinions all the time; that every random thought or flush of outrage is immediately posted on Facebook or Twitter or on the comments section of a news website. People aged in their forties, and older, can clearly remember a time when it was not the fashion to be outraged all the time, when your opinions were only shared with a small group of people and they didn’t permanently end up in a corner of cyberspace to haunt you when you’d had time to think.
Number four is try to recall the way the world was when you were younger. And that doesn’t have to be in rose coloured, ‘it was all champagne and unicorns’ kind of way. Remember when you could smoke in pubs? That’s only, like, 13 years ago. Remember when you tried to log onto the internet, you had to make a dial-up connection and it made that funny buzzy, beepy noise? And remember how you had to go to a travel agent to book flights and the long, wavy, flimsy tickets they gave you?
The smoking ban, broadband and instant flight check-in are all great, but somehow they make it seem that eating jam sandwiches and watching the A Team on a Saturday night seem a long way away. It is, it’s in the past and we can only go forward.
Change is happening in our world at a speed never seen in human civilisation before, but those memories help ground me as I face into the second half of my life, with a renewed optimism about the adventures ahead, as well, of course, as a randomly hairy chin and a big ass.