First it was my mother, then one friend after another. As far as I’m concerned, I have at least two years to go
“I’ve never seen you looking so middle-aged,” my mother said, with a kind of wonderment, an unspoken, “If you’re this age, what does that make me?” I was less offended than you’d think. Her eyesight is absolutely appalling: she can only tell the difference between the cat and the kettle when one is miaowing. Whatever it was about me that was screaming “middle years”, it was more likely to be that I smelled of garlic and Parma Violets than that my jawline was disintegrating and I’d taken on a fading skin tone. Even though both of those things may or may not be true – depending on the lighting.
Nevertheless, at a party later the same day, I found the time to complain about her, and a friend said, “Well, it must be quite weird, when your kids hit 50,” and I said, “But I haven’t hit 50”. And I didn’t even particularly mind that, since we were at a 51st birthday, and I guess it’s fair to assume that everybody at one of those will have met the milestone.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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