It’s a funny old world: Nadia Sawalha
‘How could anyone in their right mind slurp sludge like that and not lose the will to live?’
What have we become? It’s a question my husband and I ponder an awful lot these days. For most of our adult lives, we have been pretty damn rock ‘n’ roll. We have always been the neversay-no-to-a-party, live-for-the-now, never-put-anything-away-for-arainy-day kind of people. Up for fun, up for frivolity, up for frolics – and never thinking of the future!
Our weekends would invariably involve parties, dinners out, clubs, premières or having like-minded hedonists round to ours for dos that always ran into the early hours. All of which would, of course, result in us spending most Sundays nursing a hangover and ruminating about all the aliens out there in the world that were doing all those ghastly, middle-aged things like running, gardening or DIY!
If you’d said the word ‘gardening’ to us back then, we’d have said it was for people with no lives – even though our garden has looked like the backdrop to an episode from Shameless for the last 15 years.
In fact, one of our favourite things to do (en route to a pub or a late lunch) was to spot those lost souls heading off to yoga with a rolled-up mat under their arms, floating on a bubble of serenity. We’d point and laugh and be concerned for their sanity.
Once we arrived at the restaurant of our hangover choice, Heaven forbid we’d see anyone sipping a green juice. Green juice was the Devil’s work as far as Mark and I were concerned – completely unfathomable! After all, how could anyone in their right mind slurp sludge like that and not lose the will to live?
I’m sure you can guess where this is going… Travel forward 10 years to now, and something very bizarre has happened to us both. Our Sunday mornings are utterly unrecognisable when compared to those of our younger selves.
Now, instead of nursing hangovers, we jump up and head off to – you guessed it – Pilates. Instead of scoffing at couples running together in the park, we actually exercise together, believing that ‘couples who exercise together stay together’. And instead of finding us vegging out with the Sunday tabloids, you’ll now see us, watering cans in our hands, filming gardening videos for our Family YouTube Channel.
Yes – rock ‘n’ roll has given way to the more sedate things in life. We have literally become those people we pointed at in the park, thinking that we somehow knew how to have a better time than they did.
But the question is… When we catch ourselves in our new, middleaged bliss, are we now the ones being laughed at by some other younger couple? The fools! They have so many wonderful things to look forward to.