Youth may be wasted on the young but middle age is the best time of life

YOU KNOW you are definitely clinging for dear life to the upper slopes of middle age when you find yourself thinking kindly of Alan Titchmarsh, a man who was surely born to wear the mantle of “housewives’ choice” in that incredibly patronising phrase denoting cosiness of the highest order. My mum and any older woman I know (some without even so much as a window box to their name) love him and even the Queen, it seems, was moved to tell him to his face that he has made a lot of ladies very happy. He’s actually the same age as my husband whom I have hitherto never really considered as cougar fodder for femmes fatales of a certain age and more, but there you go.

Anyhow, much though I revere and follow his gardening advice (my agapanthus has never been so lush) I had never really given much thought to his philosophy of life until last week when I read that, successful though he has been in practically everything he has attempted – highly qualified gardener; respected TV pundit; popular chat-show host; classical music radio presenter; happily married father of two; proud grandad; able to put up with the antics of Joe Swift and/or Diarmuid Gavin – he only began to feel confident in his 50s.

This rang a loud bell with me, as I am a late developer par excellence, so far as I have ever developed at all. I lay claim to no great or brilliant successes in life but I am here to tell you that there is a great sense of liberation to be had from having the confidence to say no and to stand up to people who seem to feel their role in life is to make yours more difficult.

I always remember the sage words of my late aunt, widowed very young with three children, a latecomer to higher education who went on to become a primary school headmistress and something of an authority on children’s books. When I was having a bit of a dark night of the soul in my mid-20s, she told me that it had taken her until at least the age of 45 to learn to say: “Beggar off.” Although she didn’t say beggar but you know what I mean.

I reckon I was even later arriving at this enlightened stage of life – like MrT, in my 50s. I’ve been a much happier bunny ever since and believe me, there is a lot to be said for, when the occasion arises, saying exactly what you mean and refusing to allow others to wield a power over you and your actions that they have no right to. Youth may be wasted on the young but middle age – it’s the best years of your life! ACCORDING TO researchers from the University of Washington, talking to your baby like a baby will make the little mite super-eloquent in later life. Gooing and cooing are just the thing, it appears, to stimulate the wee grey cells and mini-brains to great feats of the future. The irritation factor of massed high-pitched chatter, strangulated vowels and tribal cries of “diddums-den” and “who-a-lubbly-babba!” notwithstanding, language development is apparently better in weans spoken to in this babbling manner, with pint-sized prodigies boasting knowledge of 443 words by the age of two, as opposed to those deprived or depraved youngsters whose parents eschew “parentese” and talk to them like sentient human beings. These will only be able to call to mind 169.

Whether these 443 words can be strung together to make any kind of sense at all, is, of course, not recorded. How many words do you need to say: “Knock it off, Ma, I heard you the first time.” ? Ten. I rest my case.

Baby talk of this kind certainly make a fine change from parents being talked down to by practically everyone who ever felt it incumbent upon them to air their opinion on someone else’s way of bringing up their child, whether at all qualified or not to do so.

It would seem, also, that the dribbling boffins who came up with this information got hold of it by attaching recording devices to children’s vests. Setting aside the deeply significant societal question of how many children actually wear vests these days and whether forcing them to do so amounts to child abuse, I’d certainly have plenty to say if I discovered a recording device in my vest. We want these children to grow up to be able to frame a cogent argument and knock seven verbal bells out of anyone who gives them lip, not start them off early down the road to phone hacking as a career choice.

And it begs the question about whether continuing education, far beyond childhood, will add to the greater gaiety of nations in this regard and turn out legions of older Einsteins and Stephen Hawkings. After all, given the way we’re addressed from a great height by most politicians, health experts, diet gurus and television pundits these days, we should all be flaming geniuses.

Picture: PA Alan Titchmarsh, a man who was surely born to wear the mantle of “housewives’ choice”.