‘It’s probably too late to achieve those childhood dreams of Olympic glory, Hollywood stardom or winning the Booker prize’
IT COMES to us all. That moment when we realise we’re not actually young any more. Though this epiphany will be officially marked for me tonight at my 50th birthday party, I crossed the Rubicon a few weeks ago.
I thought my grip on the Zeitgeist was still firm. But a social media video from the Scarlets made me realise I’m barely clinging on by my fingertips.
A couple of kids were interviewing players in a light-hearted Q&A session. A boy asked Hadleigh Parkes: “Can you floss?”
Given industrial-scale Haribo consumption in the under-10s, how admirable the little chap is concerned about dental hygiene, I mused. But the players’ response was more about throwing shapes than pulling teeth. With a grin, one sprang to his feet and started flicking his hips and arms in opposite directions.
And then it dawned. It was that dance that’s always on viral Facebooks videos. Those who realise Fortnite is not just a measurement of two weeks will also know it as an “emote”. But I didn’t know any of these things. Because I’m now bloody ancient.
So this was my Middle-Aged Moment. We all have them. And if you’re of a similar vintage and haven’t had one yet, at some point a younger person will ensure you do. We’ve done it ourselves. It’s all part of life’s generation game. As a teen, trying to contain my know-it-all cringe, I remember telling my mother that it wasn’t really “with it” to use the term “with it”.
But generational disdain soon comes full circle. One minute you’re wrapped up in your rock heroes, rolling your eyes with adolescent hauteur as your parents say: “How can you listen to that, it’s just noise!”
The next you’re watching The Graham Norton Show in utter bewilderment as a Korean boy band you’ve never heard of but are apparently the most famous young men on the planet bounce round the stage like demented wallabies.
You can keep these incremental steps towards the pop cultural grave to yourself. (Some older viewers made the mistake of tweeting their ignorance of BTS on Graham Norton and were met with a wall of hormonal outrage from the band’s global fanbase.) But when you hit a milestone birthday there is no escape from the world’s judgement of your age and stage in life.
I have not exactly hid from the BigFive-Oh, having marked it with a girls’ minibreak to Barcelona, copious amounts of Prosecco while the balloon budget for tonight’s bash has broken the bank. But that’s not to say I haven’t dreaded it too.
For one thing, there’s doing the Death Maths, as fellow fiftysomething writer Miranda Sawyer calls it. That hollow realisation that there are more years behind you than ahead of you, which means it’s probably too late to achieve those childhood dreams of Olympic glory, Hollywood stardom or winning the Booker prize.
But despite this obvious trauma, it’s not so much feeling any different in yourself, it’s about how other people now perceive you. The demographic shift is huge. At least as far as the clueless advertising industry is concerned. Before you reach this age, generations are compartmentalised and targeted as fairly narrow age groups – 16-24s, Millennials, thirtysomethings, etc.,
A 49-year-old would never be put in the same customer bracket as a teenager. Hit your half-century, however, and suddenly the whole consumer world is defined as The Over50s. You can be born in 1968 but to the companies who think you’re now decrepit fair game you might as well have been a World War Two evacuee.
My friend Helen, who is a freshfaced blonde glamourpuss, opened an email on her 50th birthday from a Stairlift company. Switch on the telly and I’m now eligible for pre-paid funeral plans while I keep checking whether Carol Vorderman is lurking in the corner of my kitchen attempting to release the equity on my house.
Even organisations who champion the best interests of the 50-plus generation fall prey to ageist stereotypes. In response to the challenges of the demographic timebomb, 2014 saw the launch of The Ready for Ageing Alliance Manifesto. The Alliance is a coalition of eight organisations who came together to make the case for action to ensure that our society is ready for ageing.
The Manifesto set out ideas for how policy-makers can better respond to the challenges of ageing. It argued that individuals need access to advice, services and opportunities for learning. The Ready for Ageing Alliance called for the creation of a “Ready for Later Life” pack given to people on their 50th birthdays.
Now this is all very laudable, but where was the marketing department? Semantics are important when you’re selling a potentially sensitive message. Ready for Ageing Alliance sounds hilariously bleak. They might as well call it the One Foot In The Grave Gang. Something like Future Proofing Your Life would have taken the shadow of the Grim Reaper away.
The Alliance released an 11-point prescription to ensure 50-year-olds are equipped for what’s to come. Some of it was useful, if a little obvious. Pay off your debts, keep fit, save money, stop smoking if you do, adapt your home – though mercifully they avoided the “stairlift” word at
this point.
But other pointers were just daft, patronising and totally inapplicable to the average 50-year-old.
“Keep up to date with the kids,” said the tips list. “The world is changing around us. Keep your mind active and engaged, from new digital technology through to new attitudes. Make sure you aren’t missing out and take every opportunity to talk to younger people. Try to get yourself online.”
Try to get yourself online? Do you know a 50-year-old who hasn’t got an iPad? I don’t. And how can anyone lecture us on technology? We were the first generation to play Pong, for heaven’s sake.
Plus, most of my peers don’t have any choice about “keeping up with the kids” because, thanks to unpaid student loans and exorbitant house prices, their offspring are still at home.
As for telling 50-year-olds to get set for the slippery slope to the elasticated-waist lands, do they know how the average 50-year-old feels about ageing?
Look who’s hitting the milestone in Wales alone – Rhod Gilbert, Michael Sheen, Cerys Matthews, Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire. Would you associate any of these cool Cymric icons with a Saga brochure?
So when it comes to talking about my Generation X, we’re not there yet. And there’s comfort in thinking about all the people who are on the journey with you and have shared the same cultural experiences. Millennials, you can keep your smashed avocado. We were raised on Spangles and Space Dust, judged our friends on whether they were Swap Shop or Tiswas, and suffered our first hangovers from a surfeit of Diamond White.
And now we want to get bolder, not older. As my pals say to me, don’t think 50, think Kylie. Yes, the Maesteg-rooted pop princess has always been my age role model. You wouldn’t see Kylie looking longingly at a seed catalogue or perusing widefit shoes with Velcro.
Indeed, Kylie celebrated her 50th birthday by posing nude with nothing but a guitar between us and her pert fabulousness. I did think of doing something similar as a defiant perimenopausal gesture but as I play the flute the instrument-to-flesh ratio wasn’t so favourable.
That’s not to say we’re ready to keep our maturing assets under wraps. Another infuriating aspect of hitting this milestone is being bombarded with lists of what NOT to wear over 50. I’ve got skinny legs so I’m still going to wear skinny jeans, thank you. And seventysomething Helen Mirren has ensured we can still wear bikinis without being prosecuted for crimes against fiftysomething fashion.
Canadian humorist Katy Buckworth did concede, however, that there may be a subtext to our choice of swimwear. “The reason you wear a bikini is not because you’ve adapted a ‘flaunting-it-at-50’ attitude, but because it’s so much easier when you have to go to the bathroom. Which you have to do every 27 minutes or so,” she quipped, adding: “Also, it’s really nice not to have fabric on your mid-section during a hot flush.”
And you’ve got to have a sense of humour hitting 50, because while it may be the new 40 it does bring different challenges. All the surveys point to this being the most stressful decade of all as fiftysomethings deal with caring for, then losing parents; and coping with teenage kids and juggling a work life that can either be peaking or struggling to keep relevant.
But there’s joy too. It’s an age where you can have experience but still have enthusiasm; be wise but occasionally wild and, after four decades of fretting about being liked, realise that’s now the least of your worries. You know who your friends are and I’m looking forward to celebrating with mine tonight. Now I know what it is, I might even floss.
I’ve told them not to bring presents, but donate to Velindre Cancer Centre instead. Because as a patron of this amazing place I’ve seen people who didn’t make it to 50. And that’s the only thing to remember on a milestone birthday – how lucky we are to reach it.