Why I Love Being (Nearly) 50

In our society, practically from birth, women are bombarded with all the heinous things that await us as we age. If you listened to parts of the propaganda machine, I mean media, you’d think that as soon as we turn 40 we begin the rapid slide into troll-dom, pointless irrelevancies whose only purpose is to keep our mouths firmly shut as we smooth out our smile lines and dye our hair and tone our upper arms (presumably to keep appealing to the allowed-to-age-naturally men with their beer bellies and receding hairlines. Hmm.)  

But, for the main, we know that that is total BS. Virtually everyone woman I have talked to has got nothing but positive things to say about getting older. It’s like the secret that society wants to keep buried. If younger women ever caught on to the delights that awaited them, then they might not buy into the narrative that sees them spending, spending, spending in order to halt their ageing process. I’ve said it before, but just imagine for a moment a world in which women aged naturally and confidently, loving themselves and each other and laughing in the face of the capitalist patriarchy.

It would be so easy to write about all the bloody brilliant things about being older – caring less what people think of you, having zero time and patience for arseholes, walking round with bags more confidence, being happy to live in joggers every day, feeling no obligation whatsoever to go out anywhere at the expense of a night on the sofa, feeling wiser, calmer more measured, wilder and bolder etc etc, not to mention the obvious but oft forgotten fact that the only alternative to ageing is, well, being dead.

But there’s only one thing I do wish to talk about, in terms of ageing, and that is my relentless, unending gratitude that I grew up in the 70s and 80s in a pre-digital, pre-internet, pre-hone age. I feel so sorry for kids today. Obviously, there are countless benefits to living in an ultra-connected global village with all facts at your fingertips. It’s wonderful that creative pursuits are now much more accessible. It’s an exciting, level playing field when practically anyone can record a track in their bedroom or film themselves delivering spoken word poetry or sell their art via a free IG page. This thrills me. I’m happy that my kids have access to inspiration from around the world, being able to see climbers, musicians, travellers, activists, disrupters doing their thing, working hard, making a difference. I’m also happy that they can see people and places that might inspire adventure and careers and makes me realise how absolutely tiny my world was back in the day, my experience shrunk to a blurry sphere around my own town.

But. And this might be the mother of all buts that ever butted. At what cost. Have we traded our kid’s mental health for knowledge and inspiration? What kind of soul/devil deal was done in a dystopian cyber lab somewhere that gave away our kid’s childhoods and safety and self-esteem in exchange for an infinite bombardment of doctored photos and fake news?

If only they could experience, just for a moment, the sound of a dial telephone or of coins falling into a public phone, the hefty weight of a suspiciously scented black receiver. Of having mothers all over the place acting as gate keepers to their kid’s phone calls and the utter annoyance at having to go through that mum switchboard before you could access your friend. And while, at the time, it was bloody annoying to wait on a dreary street corner for your mate on a Saturday morning, not able to know whether their bus was simply late or if they’d been stopped from coming out at all at the last minute, I would love for my kids to know that feeling of time dragging, frustration and disconnection. Just for a while. The speed of accessibility and the level of expected availability which is their reality is surely damaging.

I am thrilled that my childhood was coloured in by pirate radio, meticulously made mix tapes, imagination, boredom, roller discos and Top of the Pops. And saving up for records. Imagine telling a teenager today that they needed to put aside their pocket money over a number of weeks in order to buy an album. (Imagine little me in 1982 being able to download the new Culture Club album in seconds. My mind would have been blown.) But I loved the wait. The promise of something long awaited finally coming. The trip into town. Walking into the music temple that was Andy’s Records. The fizzing excitement of holding the record, finally, in my hands. The slo-mo trip home on the bus, clutching that paper bag with held breath. The sliding of the record out of the sleeve, excitement bubbling. The lowering of the needle. The absolute, complete and utter bliss.

Similarly, we waited (and waited) for films to be released on VHS. God, that was interminable.  A literal year of waiting, the clock ticking away our slow lives in our quiet, boring, disconnected houses. But I wouldn’t change for a minute my flavour of teenage film consumption. John Hughes movies, the Brat Pack, the Coreys (Haim and Feldman), The Lost boys, Back to The Future. These were golden years of teen cinema.

And yes, my diet may have been suspect and the days may have been long and uneventful. But there were evening rounders games in the street, hours and hours of roaming the countryside on my bike, trips to Chelsea Girl, Body Shop gift baskets, pouring over Smash Hits, Live Aid, Roseanne.

Who, really, could have needed anything more?

(Disclaimer – In the interest of balance in terms of getting older, when I decided to write about the thing I loved most about getting older, by the time I had opened my lap top I had forgotten the thing I loved most about getting older. I can tell you the thing I don’t like most about getting older and it’s definitely, wait, sorry, I’ve forgotten.)