RECENTLY I met friends of friends for the first time. One stared at me quite intently for a few moment before landing an expected right hook.
"We thought," she said, "You were going to be young." Well. I thought I was young.
But, of course, that is a vain fallacy. I am not young by any stretch, merely suffering from a severe case of arrested development.
I am used to being the youngest - the youngest of all my cousins, the youngest in multiple work places, the youngest manager, the youngest on the news desk. The problem with being the youngest is that it is an ephemeral boast.
New generations march on behind in all areas of life.
And why is an expectation of youth a compliment? Maybe, rather, it's a sign of presenting as immature or unformed or with general room for improvement.
Yet the years advance and with them bring a particular fear, not of ageing, but of being old.
So I read Liam Gallagher's interview about his poor old arthritic hips and I felt for him on a deep level.
"When the weather's cold," Gallagher told MoJo magazine, "My hips are like snap, crackle and pop." This isn't the snap, crackle and pop music writers are used to eliciting from rock stars.
Rather than have a hip replacement operation, the singer says he would "rather just be in pain".
"Which is ridiculous, obviously. I know that. But it's the stigma, saying you've had your hips replaced." He goes on to deliver the killer blow, the cri de coeur of us all: "What's next?"
First the hips, then the knees, then the back goes. Then cataracts and then, horribly, the mind.
That's where the mind goes at a sleepless 3am. What next?
There's a very specific stigma attached to being an ageing rocker, something limp and pathetic to it. There's only so long a man can continue with debauched hard living, substances and girls, before it gets sad. Pathos ain't sexy.
Not being an ageing rocker, I can't quite understand the specific fear of decline that comes alongside it. I do fret about age-related standards of behaviour.
A friend around my age posts on Twitter about the joy she gets from seeing her 18-year-old son rock in around 4am from a lively night out, cat nap and then head to work.
She admires his energy, remembers when she too had that energy.
It's not unheard of for some of my friends and I to be out until 4am, cat nap and then head to work. On other days I'm getting up at 4am to start work. For some people buoyancy is the preserve of the young and a night at the dancing shameful behaviour for anyone past a certain cut off point.
On one hand, I'm worried to admit to this because of my advancing years. On the other hand I'm worried my mum's reading and I'll get a row. What a sweet spot are the 30s.
It's strange to find myself sympatico with the hard man of rock – we likely have nothing else in common – but the early signs of decay are terrifying.
I find my hips no longer do what I want them to any more either, though the context is less arthritis and more adult ballet.
All the physical things you utterly take for granted can be counted upon no longer.
It's all relative though, isn't it? Someone young might read this and think I must be ancient.
Others will scoff at the idea such a nipper is worried about getting old. By the time my Granny Porteous reached 105 everyone was a girl.
Youth is pretty brilliant. I wish we all had more of it. That's not a new sentiment, of course. Alexander the Great was young enough when the notion of a Fountain of Youth started doing the rounds. Plato's peers were keen on the idea of rejuvenation.
We have more of it now in that we refer to ourselves as young for far longer than previous generations. A 30-year-old now might refer to herself as young when a 30-year-old of my mother's generation was middle aged. The vast majority of my friends are having babies in their late 30s, middle aged but new mums all the same.
Despite this great perspective shift, Gallagher is correct in saying that stereotypes of older people exist, stigma still exists.
The reality of marathon running 75-year-olds and free-world leading 79-year-olds has done very little from the media stereotype of old age as a pair of clutched hands, veins like nautical ropes twisted in frailty.
The Queen was 96 this week and is a poor example to use for good health and graceful ageing because millionaire status makes both of these things a great deal easier.
But I did love her birthday portrait, jaunty in green with two firm white ponies, one for each hand. It was a bit bonkers, a bit unexpected, but delightful.
That reading of the photograph though is part of the problem. We expect older people to be chair bound and frail, wee souls. Anything that deviates from this is praised in a patronising manner.
Good for them! What larks. Aren't they subversive, having clung on to their own personality instead of becoming staid blanks.
People try to sell you on ageing. I've been waiting for things to fall into place, as promised. So far they haven't. I was assured that in my 30s I would cease to care what anyone thought of me. I was told that the 30s come with an exquisite, unassailable bolshiness.
As you age you're supposed be better able to regulate your emotions and exist in a state of equilibrium, have a meaningful connection to living in the present. So far this is all a lie.
I feel no different now than at 25, except that at 25 I didn't have to worry about calorie counts or a mortgage. Others my age are married, parents, sorted.
That's the thing about ageing - we're sold it as a one size fits all state. I largely expect that those who are youthful when they're young will retain mischief into advanced years. Those with a more pessimistic bent will glower into that good night. It is a both a collective and yet a deeply individual experience.
And so, Liam, for God's sake, have the hip operation. You'll feel fitter, better... more youthful.
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