Dinner for Two (22 page)

Getting Older

The fear of getting older has for a long time been considered an oestrogen owner’s concern. It was women who worried about the ticking of their biological clocks, who were ‘creative’ when talking about their age, and worried about being left on the shelf. Men, like fine wine and good cheeses, were supposed to get better as they aged. The getting-older man was supposed to have made it. He’d be like Sean Connery in
Goldfinger
: cool, accomplished and self-assured. Women would find him irresistible, twentysomething men would find him intimidating, and everyone would be envious of him. That was how it was supposed to be. That was how I wanted it to be. But now, at thirty-two, I too am getting older and I’m not so sure.

So what happened? A number of things. First the previous generation who should’ve been turning forty in the potting shed of their garden, surrounded by small children and tax returns, have decided to grow old disgracefully. This group, composed of confirmed bachelors, childless divorcees and the serially monogamous, are behaving like twentysomethings. This is not only against the natural order of things but quite upsetting too. Most getting-older men I know are in relationships and like it that way. The thought that one day all the security that our partners offer could be taken away, leaving us to relive our twenties, is truly terrifying. So now we getting-older men not only have to worry about finding and keeping Ms Right, we have to face the prospect that failure will result in us spending the next decade driving sports cars, dating teenage girls and wearing leather trousers. A nice idea in theory but cheesy in practice.

Second, now that for women weekly sessions with a therapist, a yogi
and
a
tai chi
master are the norm we men, having so little to complain about in our relatively uncomplicated lives, have decided to join the party. Now we worry about our weight, we worry about our love lives, and we worry about worrying. Getting-older women, on the other hand, are having a great time. The media have created a new buzz word ‘middle youth’ to describe them. These women are more likely than men to instigate divorce proceedings if their partners aren’t up to scratch and, to top it all, they’re reaching their sexual peak just as the average guy is slipping into something of a trough.

My greatest fears about getting older focus on achievements in life. The first of which being the list: What I can no longer achieve that I used to be able to achieve very easily. The edited highlights alone make for grim reading. I can no longer beat my mate Lee in a sprint (he is twenty-five, skinny and unhealthy, and until recently I’d always beaten him). I can no longer stay up all night (I went to a glamorous club in central London a while ago and fell asleep while young girls in fluffy push-up bras danced around me – it was only ten past midnight). I can no longer make love all night. (Thankfully my wife and I are always so tired from work that she probably wouldn’t want to even if I could.)

Of course life isn’t going to come to a halt just because I’m getting older. I know I’m not going to swap my Air Max trainers for a pair of slippers, but what I fear, and what I suspect all men fear, is change, no matter how gradual, no matter how subtle. But change is a fact of life, so you can either fight it and fail or, like Millennium Woman, accept it and grow. Alternatively, like most things in life there is a middle ground: while I might rage against the dying of my Nikes there’s part of me that’s secretly looking forward to getting older.

When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Ellie Dunn, in Bernard Shaw’s