Dead giveaways to ageing
AT THE weekend, Madonna left the house. Cue: a flurry of headlines, none of them about the UFC fight she was attending in New York; all of them about how she’d gone out without succumbing to the pressure to present herself in a suitably matchy-matchy fashion.
But this had nothing to do with her clothes. What got everyone into a real lather was the ludicrous offence of her 58-year-old face (smooth, dewy, perfectly made up) not matching her 58-year-old hands (wrinkled, knotted with veins, looking like they put in a decent shift).
Hands, unlike infinitely lift-able, peel-able, Botox-able faces, are notoriously treacherous.
To those who like to keep people guessing as to their real ages, the dowager digits will always give them away.
But it’s not just hands that betray your vintage: modern life is a minefield of tiny slip-ups and faux pas that will give you away, no matter how down with the kids you are (NB no one under 40 ever uses that phrase). Below are the things that really show your age.
Your phone etiquette
NEVER, under any circumstances, leave messages on people’s phones. No one under 30 ever does this. In fact, they get offended if you do because, you know, this is a massive drag. Actually, don’t phone at all, text. Or WhatsApp.
Also, giving anyone a landline number adds about 20 years to your perceived age – you might as well go the full seventies glittery eye shadow and curly perm, grandma.
An obsession with privacy
WHEN Mark Zuckerberg, inventor of Facebook, declared privacy to be no longer a social norm, everyone under 30 just shrugged and got on with Instagramming their boobs and bottoms.
So don’t jump as if touched by a ghost when the new shoes or beautiful dress you just bought online suddenly appear on your Facebook sidebar. It’s irredeemably middleaged to be mortally offended that someone is watching everything you do.
Weird way you talk about TV
WHEN you’re bluffing an interest in something, don’t say: “I’ve taped it.” The last time anyone taped anything of any significance was Watergate.
It’s all about the download now. In fact, very few of the under-30s even have a television, preferring to do all viewing via a laptop. On those rare occasions that they do want to watch the big match on a big screen, they will just go to the pub.
How you behave in restaurants
THERE’S absolutely no point in complaining that they’re far too noisy, you can’t book and you don’t want to sit cheek by jowl with strangers on the shared table.
Also, be aware that the person serving you probably wasn’t born the last time anyone had to sign a credit card receipt, so please do keep the writing-in-the-air mime for the bill to yourself. They think you’re conducting an orchestra that exists only in your head.
Your musical history
BE aware that admitting you went to Live Aid is the equivalent of boasting you were in the room when Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville first recorded Au Clair de la Lune on a phonautograph in 1860.
Also, no one needs to know that the most romantic gesture ever was when someone made you a mix tape, or that you used to spend every Sunday night welded to a cassette player, hovering over the pause button, attempting to make a seamless recording of the top 40 from the radio. (When they said “Home taping is killing music”, they hadn’t even dreamed of Spotify.)
Your attitude to skinny jeans
IF a youth appears in circulationstopping skinny jeans, s/he will think you demented if you purrrrrr in your best Brooke Shields voice, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins”, as you channel the iconic Eighties ad for Calvin Klein’s tighter-than-tight stretch denim, for which Brooke was the face and legs. Muttering something about Pretty Baby might get you put on a register somewhere. Give it up. — The Daily Telegraph