As my daughter hits 16 this year, I’ll be hitting 50. Liberation and new adult privileges are hers for the taking. But surely that’s the case for me, too…..isn’t it?
Everywhere I look there’s a plethora of information telling me how much I stand to gain from blowing out those five decades worth of candles.
Car insurers love me. All their ads say so. At last I’m officially too mature to pack my car with friends and head off to the nearest supermarket to do wheelies in the car park.
House insurers love me. Their ads say so. Yup, at 50, I'm so streetwise that I can spot a cowboy builder by his swagger; so security conscious that I’ve had the vestibule papered in Neighbourhood Watch stickers.
I’ve even stood outside the front door and attempted to hook my own keys through the letter box the way burglars do, just to make sure I’ve stashed them a safe distance away.
And I own a carriage clock – and a vintage pack of Rizlas. Good heavens, what more can anyone want as testimony that I’m at once cool, yet sensible? Matured, in fact, into the ideal citizen.
So as I sashay, virtually speaking, on to the Over 50s section of the government’s own website, DirectGov, I’m feeling pretty confident about how the outside world views me and my fellow (though mature) coolsters?
Then I start to read and am struck by a growing sense of bewilderment. Surely this is some hideous mistake? I check again.
And, yes, it’s definitely is where the two score and ten mob come in. It’s just that our beloved government’s notion of how my post-50 life is going to be lived is distinctly at odds with mine.
Take work. I have every intention of doing some. Lots, actually – and not in noticeably different way to how I do it now. And everyone else I know feels the same, economic climate permitting.
You’d never guess it, though. Work appears to be largely off the radar of the civil service drone who put this section together, presumably on the assumption that the over 50s are doing well just to move about a bit, let alone make it into a paying job.
There are just two headings, ‘Looking for work,’ and ‘Working to suit you.’
These are followed, immediately and ominously with the third and final section, cheerily entitled ‘Losing your job’ - employers, presumably, preferring their gorgeous, pouting oldsters to work to suit them instead.
Perhaps on the assumption that readers like me will now be plunged into terminal melancholy, the website devotes what to my mind is a disproportionate amount of space to what should obviously now become my major preoccupations: illness and death.
Above all, the government is worried that I might be cold and keen that I should, above all, wrap up warm.
Cold? That’s the last thing they should worry about. After reading this, I’m boiling – with fury.
With work, health and death safely covered off, it’s time to see what the future holds as far as sex is concerned.
I turn to NHS Live Well ‘Sex as you get older’ section. Much of it appears to be penned in that intensely irritating format of rhetorical questions, beloved of beaurocrats and parents of small children (‘How dare you behave like that?’) and much loathed by everyone else, especially me.
‘Why [should over 50s] wear a condom?’ the NHS wants to ask me. Well riddle me ree to you, too. Clearly, in view of their own depressing take on the area, the answer must be, ‘So you can pretend you’re still fertile and defy your own mortality.’
Needless to say, that’s not what required. You’re never too old to outwit STDs is, of course, the correct answer. Ain’t it good to know that those dear little bacteria still love us, no matter how old we get?
‘Your sex life needn’t disappear once you hit 50,’ it adds. What’s with that ‘needn’t’ word? And, sorry, but did I say I thought it did? And as for disappearance - well, at least I can be reasonably confident that no burglar is going to hook it out of the letterbox with a fishing rod.
As far as the government’s concerned, you can forget 50 being the new 40. Instead, it appears to be the new 60 and counting (up). Fifty five is the new 70. And God forbid that I even contemplate stretching my palsied limbs in the direction of my 60th birthday cake. Try to cut it and they’ll probably arrest me for knife crime.
And as for congratulations for having hit my semi-centenary…..well, it wouldn’t surprise me to find a link to a fold-it-yourself origami coffin. But look on the bright side. At least the exercise will keep me warm.
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14 comments:
It's very sad that your government views your upcoming state of condition with such a great deal of pessimism, when obviously the best years of your life are starting. I speak of experience, because I am 54 and I have never been happier. Don't believe anything you read that has been written by a bureaucrat. What do they know about real life? They have desk jobs and are totally incapable of even touching the margins of the grittier parts of what life is all about, especially when it comes to sex and work. Don't believe that you are over the hill now. You are merely at a resting place for the continuing journey for the rest of your life. There is still all sorts of excitement ahead and all that knowledge to apply to any situation. 50 is the new 30.
mum, have you gone through the menopause yet??
The Finely Tuned Woman: Thank you for your thoughtful response. I still reckon I'm teetering on the brink, but it's nothing a mouthful of assorted chemical coshes won't sort.
Alex: Who are you?
i'm your daughter, who do you think i am you silly woman?!
(i love you really. which is why i attack you with love under bridges to embarass you!)
Gulp.
Coming on 50? Pish tosh, I did that more than a decade ago and I'm having more fun than ever. I believe the slogan, "You're not getting older, you're getting better." The Finely Tuned Woman was the kid in our group when she lived on this coast, and I know she's got better and better since then. You will too. My government seems to think the opposite of yours, wants me to put off collecting benefits, but then, I think it's flat broke, LOL!
OM - hee, rumbled. You're going to be needing that origami coffin. But if you don't, can I have it?
Governments my love are made up of old pruney men and megalomaniacs - not hot, energetic, fired up women like your own self! Ignore and proceed at your own pace.
I think a lot of the government are younger than me these days and I'm 40 this year. That's the problem perhaps.
I notice all the ads on tv for over 50 life insurance. Doesn't make the world sound very optimistic does it!
Ha ha ha. Over here it's the bloody opposite. We have all these TV ads with beautiful silver-haired people in their fifties and sixties finding new love in their marriages, ab-sailing down god knows where and generally having the time of their lives. Far too much to live up to if you ask me.
This is hilariously true. Sad, but true. Love your take on it.
ROTFL at the comments from Alex. Now I KNOW you're menopausal (like me). You forgot who your daughter is. Classic sign.
I love the fact that your daughter's blogger profile lists her occupation as "teenager".
Oh, to have an occupation that is also ones identity.
Breakfast in California: Like your style. Feel upbeat, in an elderly kinda way.
Jaywalker: Well, you may have noticed I've had trouble keeping up with the rest of you. I need a virtual hip replacement.
Lady Macleod: All fine, but what do you do when pruney old men start to seem strangely appealing?
CJ: I still love you, even though I have age envy...
Expat wife: I want to abseil into the sunset, too. And dammit, I will, one day. Put a silver fox on ice for me, would you?
Crazycath: How was I to know? She could have been anybody. And once you have three, you forgettheir blog identities, anyway
Iota: In an irritating way, it's quite sweet, I suppose. Though really it's just irritating.
Iota:
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