A Shed Of One’s Own: Midlife Without the Crisisby Marcus Berkmann (Little, Brown, £12.99)
Every sociology student learns the basic laws of consumption: first people thirst for things, then they thirst for experiences. But when you’ve had the car and the Caribbean holiday, what comes next? In my jaundiced opinion, the new taste-thrill is mild personal trauma; it says so much more about you than money ever can. A personality crisis raises one above the uncomplicated, cheery peasants of this world; it’s sexy to be a screw-up.
These days, everyone appears to have a famous mental ailment for 15 minutes. If you’re too greedy to be anorexic like your favourite actress or too squeamish to self-harm like your pop-star pin-up, then stress, SAD and food allergies are pain-free ways to join the Pale And Interesting Club. And if you’ve left it a bit late, never fear, for the midlife crisis is notoriously a man’s best friend when you need an excuse for throwing your toys out of the pram while acquiring new ones—ideally fast vehicles and even faster young women.
But in times of austerity, does your average salary-man really have the readies to chuck around on Harleys and Hayleys? Marcus Berkmann’s charming little book suggests that middle age, far from being a crisis point which we must resist, is actually an enchanted portal through which we can access a new world which makes our supposed salad days look little more appealing than the antics of a hamster on a wheel.
Being middle-aged is something that very few of us are quick to own up to. Women in particular moan about feeling “invisible”—as if that wasn’t a relief after 30 years of being growled at and groped up by total strangers whenever one has the sheer brazen cheek to go out in public unaccompanied by a man. (And as if invisibility wasn’t the superpower we all dreamt of as a kid.) Thus only 3 per cent of Britons in their thirties consider themselves middle-aged and no more than a third of those in their forties recognise that description of themselves—though, adorably, 27 per cent of those in their seventies claim the label.
Part of the fear of and resistance to middle age is its obvious significance as the somewhat ramshackle halfway-house between birth and death, when things start to go wrong, possibly irrevocably. Berkmann quotes the sitcom psychiatrist Frasier Crane’s definition of it as the time when you cannot sit down on a sofa without going “OOF!”—presumably because something or other is seizing up. But it’s also the time when we take ownership of ourselves fully and stop needing to suck up to and seek the approval of others, which more than compensates for bits falling off. I would add two more definitions of my own; first, thinking that anyone who rings you up after 7pm is a very likely to be a loony and thus the phone is best unanswered, and secondly, being so thrilled when a social engagement is cancelled by the other person that you do a lap of honour through your flat, singing “We Are The Champions” to your frankly appalled cat. Both of them reflect the take-it-or-leave-it self-sufficiency which many people I know have embraced in mid-life.
Berkmann knows his subject, and writes with great affection of decay, rage and pedantry. He does have the occasional stylistic lapse which made me go “Ick!” rather than “Ooo!” For instance, whenever I read the phrase “making babies,” I am overcome with a strong urge to hack out my primary and secondary sexual organs and run down the street waving them over my head and shouting “FRYING TONIGHT!” But maybe that’s just me. All in all, this book is well worth stuffing into someone’s support stocking as Christmas creaks nearer.
This is a rotten time to be young and a scary time to be old—life is a scrapheap at both ends—but somehow middle age seems perfectly suited to these dog days. With your “best” behind you, you can surrender to the collective sofa with an OOF! of admission that all lives end in failure—ie death—and truly enjoy your remaining years as a sentient and sexual being. Who knows, if you take steps to make sure you don’t live too long, and make sure to swerve past both private nursing homes and NHS hospitals, you may even be able go out in a blaze of silver-surfer glory, catching senile-delinquent-type STDs and SKI-ing (Spending the Kids’ Inheritance) as the Daily Mail is always reporting. Bring it on!
Every sociology student learns the basic laws of consumption: first people thirst for things, then they thirst for experiences. But when you’ve had the car and the Caribbean holiday, what comes next? In my jaundiced opinion, the new taste-thrill is mild personal trauma; it says so much more about you than money ever can. A personality crisis raises one above the uncomplicated, cheery peasants of this world; it’s sexy to be a screw-up.
These days, everyone appears to have a famous mental ailment for 15 minutes. If you’re too greedy to be anorexic like your favourite actress or too squeamish to self-harm like your pop-star pin-up, then stress, SAD and food allergies are pain-free ways to join the Pale And Interesting Club. And if you’ve left it a bit late, never fear, for the midlife crisis is notoriously a man’s best friend when you need an excuse for throwing your toys out of the pram while acquiring new ones—ideally fast vehicles and even faster young women.
But in times of austerity, does your average salary-man really have the readies to chuck around on Harleys and Hayleys? Marcus Berkmann’s charming little book suggests that middle age, far from being a crisis point which we must resist, is actually an enchanted portal through which we can access a new world which makes our supposed salad days look little more appealing than the antics of a hamster on a wheel.
Being middle-aged is something that very few of us are quick to own up to. Women in particular moan about feeling “invisible”—as if that wasn’t a relief after 30 years of being growled at and groped up by total strangers whenever one has the sheer brazen cheek to go out in public unaccompanied by a man. (And as if invisibility wasn’t the superpower we all dreamt of as a kid.) Thus only 3 per cent of Britons in their thirties consider themselves middle-aged and no more than a third of those in their forties recognise that description of themselves—though, adorably, 27 per cent of those in their seventies claim the label.
Part of the fear of and resistance to middle age is its obvious significance as the somewhat ramshackle halfway-house between birth and death, when things start to go wrong, possibly irrevocably. Berkmann quotes the sitcom psychiatrist Frasier Crane’s definition of it as the time when you cannot sit down on a sofa without going “OOF!”—presumably because something or other is seizing up. But it’s also the time when we take ownership of ourselves fully and stop needing to suck up to and seek the approval of others, which more than compensates for bits falling off. I would add two more definitions of my own; first, thinking that anyone who rings you up after 7pm is a very likely to be a loony and thus the phone is best unanswered, and secondly, being so thrilled when a social engagement is cancelled by the other person that you do a lap of honour through your flat, singing “We Are The Champions” to your frankly appalled cat. Both of them reflect the take-it-or-leave-it self-sufficiency which many people I know have embraced in mid-life.
Berkmann knows his subject, and writes with great affection of decay, rage and pedantry. He does have the occasional stylistic lapse which made me go “Ick!” rather than “Ooo!” For instance, whenever I read the phrase “making babies,” I am overcome with a strong urge to hack out my primary and secondary sexual organs and run down the street waving them over my head and shouting “FRYING TONIGHT!” But maybe that’s just me. All in all, this book is well worth stuffing into someone’s support stocking as Christmas creaks nearer.
This is a rotten time to be young and a scary time to be old—life is a scrapheap at both ends—but somehow middle age seems perfectly suited to these dog days. With your “best” behind you, you can surrender to the collective sofa with an OOF! of admission that all lives end in failure—ie death—and truly enjoy your remaining years as a sentient and sexual being. Who knows, if you take steps to make sure you don’t live too long, and make sure to swerve past both private nursing homes and NHS hospitals, you may even be able go out in a blaze of silver-surfer glory, catching senile-delinquent-type STDs and SKI-ing (Spending the Kids’ Inheritance) as the Daily Mail is always reporting. Bring it on!
