Jayne Dowle: We can’t do much about the wrinkles but age really is just a state of mind

Anyway, according to a new survey by a healthcare company it’s getting later. Middle age now officially kicks in on your 53rd birthday. Eight years to go then. Not that I’m counting. In this day and age, there’s no point getting worked up about your actual age. Most of us are going to be working until we’re at least 65. No early retirement and sunset cruises for my generation. Attempting to measure our lives by the parameters set by our parents is futile.

I probably mean our grandparents. My parents are both approaching 70 and celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary at the end of this month. I still have to remind myself that they are old age pensioners. They do listen to Radio Two, and possess not only travel sweets but even a special in-car box with mugs and tea-making essentials. Still, it’s hard to put an age on them.

Dad follows football and cricket as avidly as my 11-year-old son. And mum, me and my seven-year-old daughter share a variety of passions including shoes, shopping and Downton Abbey. Generations are blending as never before.

It’s like my friend who plays drums in a rock band with his teenage son on vocals. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it in a down-with-the-kids way. He just gets behind the kit, just as he’s been doing since he was 15. Can you imagine your grandad in an Iron Maiden T-shirt?

It’s all gone a bit blurred. Like the way I screw my eyes up when I catch sight of that vertical wrinkle on my forehead. Short-sightedness is a blessing in some ways. It’s such a bore though, the way it all starts to fall apart physically. If it wasn’t for that wrinkle, and a few other things I won’t make you feel queasy with, I’d still be 25. In my head at least.

It’s said that life begins at 40. I’d say that life diverges at 40. Your friends and contemporaries split rapidly into two camps; the ones who have been anxious for middle age to claim them since they left school, and the ones who swear at those damned wrinkles and carry on dancing.

This is not leading up to some platitudinous comment about being as young as you feel. Some days I feel quite ancient. My eyes give up on me. And I could really do with a nap at about 2pm. This doesn’t mean, however, that I am ready for elasticated waistbands and a tidy perm. I’m raging, raging against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas urged. I’m not exactly using a melancholic alcoholic Welsh poet who died at the age of 39 as a role-model, but I like his prophetic vision – and his passion.

That’s one of the major dividers. Passion. A desire to try new things. Never saying never. Not in a self-conscious, look-at-me-still-being-wild kind of way, but with an attitude of “bring it on and 
why not?”.

I am inspired by a former colleague who is approaching 60. She believes our forties and fifties to be the most productive years in terms of brain power. All that knowledge and experience accumulated. The endless exhausting cares of rearing babies over and done. We speak our minds and get on with the job. If only more employers respected our strength and fortitude.

If we want to thrive in these middle years, we should live them like they might be our last. Sorry to put a downer on things, but many of us will have already seen friends die without fulfilling their dreams.

This summer I did three things I’ve never done before: I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with two friends from university, learnt to surf in Devon with my son and had my very first horse-riding lesson with my daughter.

It did strike me that running along a beach with a bunch of screaming adolescent boys was perhaps not the most dignified of holiday activities. Then I looked around and saw men and women I took to be in their sixties and seventies hurling themselves into the Atlantic.

I told myself off for being so judgmental. And afterwards I told myself off for wasting my precious time reading a daft survey which informed me that if I belong to the National Trust and take an interest in gardening, my life will effectively be almost over. By that reckoning, my clock would definitely have stopped at 25 when I had the time, the leisure and the disposable income to enjoy both activities regularly.

Perhaps that’s the trick these days. To enter adulthood with no preconceptions about what should happen when – or when to tell yourself it’s time to grow up.