After 9/11, many office blocks in midtown Manhattan stockpiled enough emergency supplies to maintain their inhabitants for two weeks. The reasoning behind this was that if a big enough bomb went off in Times Square, the shattered glass from all the skyscrapers would rise to the level of seven feet and it would take emergency services a fortnight to dig everyone out.
After the Paris attacks, it’s the kind of action movie-type detail that New Yorkers are starting to talk about again, along with whether or not to go into the centre of town with their kids. A week ago, Bill de Blasio issued a sensible statement after Islamic State released what looked like a bad MTV video from the 90s threatening to attack New York, and President Obama asked Americans not to let fear overshadow today’s Thanksgiving.
Most don’t need reminding. Last week, a rumour circulated that someone “high up in the service” was telling people to stay off the subway, which some of us did for half a day. But by 6pm, faced with the choice of sitting in midtown traffic at rush hour or ignoring the threat, even the most paranoid among my friends shrugged and got on the train. The one thing more powerful than fear is inertia.
Welcome to your roaring 40s
An unintended side effect of our over-documented times is that it is almost impossible to lie about your age and get away with it. Even if your own social media profile conceals your date of birth, you are only ever one cross-reference away from some git you went to primary school with over-sharing theirs, or a reference from your deep past bouncing up to date you.
This is a good thing, I guess, working as it does to reduce the load of things we have to feel shameful about, although it’s a pyrrhic victory, particularly for women, given that there has been no commensurate retreat in ageism.
Still, we perhaps have more wriggle room than generations before us. This year and next, almost everyone in my immediate peer group turns 40. It’s generally agreed that 40 isn’t what it was, not merely because life expectancy has increased, but because major life events have been shunted down the field. The year I was born, 1975, the average age of first-time mothers in the UK was 26 (in the US it was 22); now it’s 30, and the number of women having babies in their 40s has doubled in 10 years. The great majority of my social group has either just had kids or is only now beginning to gear up for it.
Stylistically something has changed, too. By and large, our parents at 40 didn’t dress like their own teenage children. Now, as far as I can tell, unless you’re in a suit, everyone dresses pretty much like they did at 25. The guy in my neighbourhood who takes his kid to school on a skateboard doesn’t stand out, which may be a bad advertisement for the neighbourhood but is also just the extreme version of everyone else at the gate in their hoodies and headphones.
It doesn’t matter. Thirty was still young enough to feel histrionically old; but at almost 40, the long-range forecast is just starting to look alarming enough to make one feel grateful, for the moment, and young.
The Victoria Wood effect
A friend visiting me from home this week triggered a YouTube bender that included the 1988 TV special An Audience With Victoria Wood. “Mmm, they look comfy!” “Red cabbage how much? Red cabbage no idea!” I could go on. When grimness abounds, vintage Victoria Wood karaoke is a security blanket every 40-something should reach for.
