When 41-year-old school friends Annabel and Sophie went clubbing recently, they met, just as they always used to, for a few warm-up drinks first. But things looked a little different to their teenage years.
The pre-venue was Sophie’s allotment in Tottenham. Then they’d head onto a day clubbing event at Drumsheds – the former IKEA warehouse – which has a parent-of-young-kids-friendly finish time of 10pm.
“It was funny because it brought back memories of when we used to sneak booze out of our parents’ house when we first started clubbing more than 20 years ago,” Annabel says. “Here we were, two mums now hiding from our kids, pretending to be teenagers again. But crucially, home before midnight.”
Being 40 looks different nowadays. When my parents entered their fourth decade as I recently did, they were living in a nice house at the bottom of a cul-de-sac in a Yorkshire village. My dad went to work in a suit and tie, while mum did the school run in floral knee length skirts and made cakes for the PTA. They had friends over for occasional dinner parties or dressed in black tie for corporate functions.
My world – and that of my fellow 40-something, middle class Londoners – feels like a different era. School runs are a veritable catwalk show of parents dressed in Ganni dresses, Norse Projects caps and Damson Madder blouses (sourced on Vinted), and at schools with no uniform, the kids wear Bobo Choses, Mini Rodini and Whatever joggers. E-cargo bikes litter the school gates ready to be driven off again by parents, as soon as they’ve prised the kids from their legs.
Everything is done at break-neck speed. If you’re 40 and living and working in London, you’re most likely either heading up a department at work or running the whole thing. “I still feel in my head that I’m 25, but I’m responsible for millions of pounds of budgetary spend, and while I used to be the last one standing at work drinks, now I can feel all the 20-year-olds waiting for me to leave before they can have fun” one 43-year-old friend, who heads up an advertising agency, says.
Or you’re quitting to start your own business – which more 40-year-olds are doing – there’s a feeling of now or never.
Either way, midlife working hours are not nine to five (they never have been, ever since we were young newly-qualified Millennials, eager to impress new bosses). Even if a working day ends with the dash to nursery pick up, the laptop opens up again after dinner, and it’s rare that an OOO really means you’re uncontactable, even on the beach.
Unlike most of us in our twenties (save for the few, strange, outliers), 40-somethings have newly found fitness, and are muscling each other out the way at the weight racks – particularly the girls. I’m one of them. I dabbled with tiny weights in the odd cardio class during my twenties and thirties, but really fell hard for pumping iron (egged on by my no-excuses 25-year-old Romanian personal trainer) last year. The biggest complement you can pay a 40-year-old these Ozempic-fuelled days is that they look strong.
And along with posting leg press PBs to Instagram, the new humble brag is definitely how early you turn in (that means 6pm dinner bookings; the new rush hour according to data from OpenTable). Because of course we’re chasing the youthful glow that none of us thought to truly value back in our uni days in 2005.
The new humble brag is definitely how early you turn in — that means 6pm dinner bookings
Our bedtime routines have become as lengthy as toddlers’ with 10-minute LED face mask (a true passion killer), cocktails of magnesium supplements (all anyone can talk about over dinner), and expensive organic face creams (now we have the disposable income).
The best microneedling treatments are hotly debated (it’s The Alternative Facialist on South Molton Street if you ask me) – while others have a £20 organic salad lunch budget, then are getting Botox “just on the 11s, please”.
As we’re more health conscious than ever (and scared of hangovers that leave us knocked out for days), boozing has taken a back seat. Monday to Thursday it’s artisanal kombucha (think south London brand Momo) and we debate which brand of mushroom or CBD gummies are the best for taking the edge off a tough day.
“I’ve become a total midlife mushroom-head to ensure focus and clarity during the day, and for their anxiety-busting, sleep-improving evening qualities,” says fashion journalist Harriet Walker.
She favours Mothermade’s AM and PM mushroom powders in morning coffee and evening tea, along with Mama Shrooms day and night capsules when she travels.
By the more illicitly-minded, mushroom oil is precured through Signal app, or even at the school gates. It’s replaced alcohol for many and lubricates plenty of after-school meet-ups.
Instead of meeting at the pub, we’re arranging dates at the sauna. As Mary Simmons, owner of Wild Beauty in Forest Gate, which has a newly-installed infra-red version, says, “I’m seeing lots of girlfriends booking in together – they’d rather a pamper and a chat than just a drink.
Not to say it’s off the menu totally: picantes are still flying off the menu at Shoreditch House, you can’t move for oysters and martinis in London (see: Noisy Oyster the hot new opening with mini tequila martinis on the menu) and every neighbourhood worth its salt has a natural wine bar, heaving with regulars thinking organic means two glasses won’t affect their Oura sleep score.
Speaking of neighbourhoods, we’re heavily invested in our own patch of London (ignoring the crescendo of chatter as people eye up places like Leigh-on-Sea or Frome for “more space”). The Brixton pound was an actual alternative currency created in 2016 to boost local economy and encourage its community to invest locally, but really, we all do that: one friend who lives within slipper-dashing-distance to his local wine bar recently went through his bank statements to reveal he spends more than £500 a month there. “It’s horribly tempting when you just want a glass of wine at home at 7pm,” he says.
Some even wear their allegiance on their chests: Forest Gate Friends is a brand of T-shirts that all E7 kids wear. That’s not to say we don’t head to town: the latest opening is worth an (early) booking, is Island in King’s Cross’s Mare Street market – if only for the socials.
When we want to escape, Estelle Manor and The Newt might be on the wish list, but who can really afford that when you’re paying London rent or mortgage rates? More likely it’s the trendy spots on Instagram where enterprising Airbnb owners have captured our algorithms (think Tides Cottage in Whitstable, the Blue House in Camber Sands or Spink’s Cottage in Norfolk), or abroad to somewhere like Marseille, that has more than a whiff of east London about it.
Fortieth birthdays often mean parent friends going off for a big trip – the new Soho House in Ibiza, for example. Or for the more creatively minded, an artistic retreat in Tuscany, where we find we really don’t know how to sit still all day any more.
All in all, it’s kind of exhausting. But definitely fun. And who would have it any other way?
