How to spot if your other half’s having a MIDLIFE CRISIS
By a dad who’s in the throes of his — and has the Porsche to prove it!
My wife calls it a ‘menoPorsche’. Sitting on our drive like a waxed black shark, it proclaims to passers-by that in our house lives a middle- aged man with delusions of youth.
And i adore it. if this is a mid-life crisis, i wish i’d had mine years ago.
i’ve always been the man least likely to buy a Porsche. Nothing in my 35 years of driving gave any hint that the onrush of mortality might impel me to spend £12,000 on a car with a soft roof, two leather seats and a top speed of 150mph.
Until recently, i pootled about town in a Renault Clio with a 1.2-litre engine. Remember the Papa and Nicole ads? i had Nicole’s car, which shows you how much i wasn’t bothered about automobiles in general.
Ask me my favourite of the cars i’d owned and i’d say the Mini i passed my test in. it was older than i was and had a top speed of 55mph, but it was nippy and fun — unlike the family cars we’ve had for decades.
So there was nothing in my history to predict what would happen when my older son, James, 24, and i dropped into a local car warehouse to find him a runaround.
JAMeS had recently passed his test, and had his eye on a lowmileage red Vw Beetle he’d first seen online. while he and the salesman went for a test drive, i strolled round the dealership’s storage bay among the usual commuter-mobiles.
A psychologist would say i was acutely vulnerable to mid-life malaise at this moment.
My son had achieved a milestone of independence — his car. i was no longer the dominant male of the family, but a whitehaired elder. Never have i been more susceptible to a goodlooking, racy thing that could make me feel joyous again.
And then, at the back of the shed, something seductive glimmered. The curved headlights were like twin beams of a Le Mans winner from the Sixties. it looked like a real car should, the sort John Steed of The Avengers or Roger Moore as the Saint might take for a spin. when a man starts to compare himself, however subconsciously, with Steed or Sir Roger, he is in a full-blown mid-life crisis.
The salesman saw the signs — i was still sighing over the car when he returned — and invited me to start the engine, guessing correctly that i had never even sat in a Porsche before.
The roof hummed back at the touch of a button. The sixcylinder engine at my back throbbed throatily.
The most tempting thing was the price — far less than i might have guessed. even a mid-range Porsche 911 costs £78,000, while a 918 Spyder, the marque’s top supercar, costs £781,000.
But the nine-year-old soft-top in the car warehouse was a Boxster, a two- seater, fun-in-the-sunshine, old-fashioned sports car, costing £12,000. it was still more than i could sensibly spend. Still, who said anything about being sensible?
‘Better not say anything to Mum,’ i warned, as we trundled home in the Renault . . . so James’s first words through the front door were, ‘Mum! Dad’s fallen in love!’
Nicky took it well. She’d been expecting some sort of juvenile reaction, ever since i turned 50 a couple of years earlier. Other male friends have embarked on disastrous flings, taken off on motorbikes around europe, spent summers chomping ecstasy at music festivals or converted to Buddhism.
The chap over the road bought a motorbike the size of a cart horse. i’d watch him manhandling it gingerly down his drive and wondered if he thought he was James Dean.
A neighbour took to jogging in full-body Lycra. every 100 yards he would stop and perform an elaborate series of stretches, probably because he’d run as far as he could without collapsing.
The mid- life crisis isn’t confined solely to men, of course. One of my wife’s friends left her husband to have an affair with her first boyfriend, from her school days — that worked out horribly for all. Another acquaintance took off on a road trip across America.
But a mid-life crisis is like any disease. Just because you recognise the symptoms doesn’t mean you can’t catch it, too. And i got a full dose.
when i said i was buying a Porsche, Nicky was just grateful it wasn’t something worse, like skin-tight leather trousers.
i can’t pretend she enjoys riding in the car. it’s so low to the road, like a go-kart, that even 20mph feels like breakneck speed. when the roof is down, her hair blows about and the suspension is so firm every bit of road grit feels like a boulder.
i have to say it takes the edge off my driving pleasure when the passenger is clinging on to the dashboard and screaming, ‘for God’s sake, slow down, you’ll kill us,’ whenever we touch 25mph.
i never imagined driving could be fun, but it is joyful. i treat myself to 15-minute spins, fizzing across the Clifton Suspension Bridge. i can’t say it makes me feel young, but that’s probably because i’m happier in my 50s than i was in my teens. i don’t want to be young: i want to be old and have a Porsche.
Perhaps we’d all have mid-life crises earlier if we could afford them. There have been plenty of years in the past when i put off buying road tax as long as i dared, as i didn’t have money. when times were really tight, i bought petrol on a credit card.
One consolation of advancing age is that sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can buy something you really, really want. Mind you, then you’ve got to keep it.
when i asked mechanics to balance the wheels, they also sorted out the power steering rack and fitted new tyres. it cost another four grand. for pity’s sake, please don’t tell my wife.
That’s why you’re more likely to see me polishing it than testing it to the limits. i don’t want to take a corner with the tyres squealing — it’s safer and more satisfying to motor around the Downs near our Bristol home, roof off and sunglasses on.
it’s fun, too, finding myself in middle age as part of a family of enthusiasts, whose existence i’d never guessed at. when an admirer calls out ‘Lovely car!’ it takes me a moment to realise i haven’t misheard.
There’s a joyful army of chaps, in their, shall we say, late prime, driving cars they might have dreamed of owning for half their lives. And yes, i’m proud to say, i’m finally one of them.