I had never had a leather jacket until three weeks ago. Why? Dunno. Didn’t think it would suit me, worried it would look like I was trying too hard, flinched at the price tag. Then I saw a turquoise one while I was out searching for warm tights and had a rush of blood to the head. I was further persuaded into this madness by a younger friend whose money and dignity were not at stake. “I think I’m having a midlife crisis,” I told the cashier. “Cheaper than a sports car,” she answered. “Or a drug habit,” I replied, and the conversation tailed off. There are probably rules about chatting to customers about that sort of thing and I have something of the mystery shopper about me.
So here I am, strutting about town like a shiny peacock at the age of 46. And now I have India Knight’s new book, In Your Prime, to help me trumpet the joys (essentially: confidence, more cash) and sidestep the pitfalls (essentially: sag, nearer death) of the middle years.
I may save it for a moment when I most need bucking up, such as breaking in new varifocals. I hope and trust it will include my favourite pastime of scaring the young by talking in old money, telling them your parents were evacuees or, if a women, ostentatiously fanning yourself and asking: “Is it just me or is it boiling in here?”
Middle-aged pride is, surely, a good thing. It must be right that youngsters realise people over the age of 35 go to see music (albeit mainly Kate Bush, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Dylan), have creaky sex, go rollerskating*.
But my greatest fear is not that, thus liberated from the cloud of others’ ignorance, we will suddenly start behaving inappropriately youthfully – not with our knees.
A more significant anxiety is that we now look so groovy and with it that our juniors are utterly bewildered. What else could explain the vast and bushy beards or the beautiful young women in granny macs? What, besides rank confusion, could have explained the thirtysomething I saw riding a full-size pushbike that had been de-pedalled, de-chained and converted into a scooter down three lanes of London traffic the other day? Or the bloke a bit further up the road nonchalantly unspooling a yo-yo while wearing a sort of aristocratic hunting outfit? Yes: a yo-yo. As I believe the young say: me neither.
Clearly, now the Queen’s on Snapchat or whatever, everything is up for grabs. The signifiers are all over the place and the (day) centre cannot hold.
But there was some value in acting our age, not our shoe size, even once the latter went wrongfootingly European.
It allowed those of us who had never been much cop at youth to relax into comfy clothes and irritatingly reasonable opinions and shunted us up so the next generation could have a go at being a pain in the arse.
There must be a middle ground, on which note, back to the leather jacket of love. Yesterday, I saw with horror that it had been defaced by a bird. I feared pathetic fallacy: fearless youth is always crapped on.
The upside: years of domestic practice mean that I know precisely how to effect the perfect home-cleaning solution.
(*not really)
