Getting Older Isn’t What You Think
Getting old creeps up on you. It’s not sudden. There’s no dramatic moment where you wake up and realise you’re “not getting any younger”. No — it’s more like a slow progression. One day, you’re out at a bar, dancing with friends, living your best life, and the next, you’re peeking over your sunglasses in horror at someone calling 36 “old”.
Case in point: I was at a pub the other evening. Lovely place. Wood-fired pizza, fairy lights, good vibes. The chap manning the pizza oven — a friendly local lad — was chatting with some customers about how old he felt now he was 36. “It’s nice being this age because I have wisdom,” he said earnestly, as I slid my sunglasses to the tip of my nose to double-check I’d heard him right. “Oh please,” I muttered under my breath. “Add a decade, mate, and then we’ll talk…”
But I get it. I really do. Lately, I’ve been noticing little shifts in myself, too. I recently watched Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse chatting about how they now prefer peace and quiet, and I felt seen. For years, I resisted it — the craving for calm. But these days, there’s nothing lovelier than a Saturday morning with a bit of jazz or classical playing, pottering about the kitchen, and then being tucked up in bed before 10pm. Wild.
And then there are the festivals. I saw a reel the other day of a young woman lamenting how too put-together everyone looks at Coachella now. She missed the old days — the raw Glastonbury vibes when Kate Moss and Alexa Chung looked cool in a completely effortless, “slightly grubby way”. Give me strength. In my day, we weren’t worried about matching our outfits to the sunset. We wore walking gear. Fleeces. Army boots. Practicality over aesthetics. The moment I saw girls tottering through the Glasto mud in silver hot pants and white knee-high boots, I knew the party was over — for me, at least.
I’m getting old. There, I said it. But honestly? Is this really an age thing, or more of a realisation that I might always have preferred a quieter life? I suspect it’s the latter. And where do these expectations and stereotypes come from anyway? Are they ones we put on ourselves, or do they come from others?
Yes, I once enjoyed the gigs, the clubbing… the organised fun of it all. But these days? Give me a freshly laundered set of pyjamas and a good book any day over a weekend at a boutique festival. This isn’t about the looming big birthday on the horizon. I know plenty of people my age who are still partying — because they always loved it.
I guess I’m feeling reflective. I’m turning 50 soon. And so far, this whole ageing conversation has been dominated by the Boomers, often blamed for the world’s problems or pitted against younger generations. A tad unfair. They just happened to get lucky, right?
Meanwhile, I come from a brilliant generation that’s hardly ever talked about.
We were the kids who missed the first wave of acid house but still got swept up in the afterglow. We straddle the line between Gen X and Millennials — the so-called Xennials. We grew up analogue and came of age in the digital revolution. We spent more time climbing trees, riding bikes and playing football than we looked at any screen. We remember our landline numbers (mine had four digits), taping songs off the radio, and the thrill of a HMV shopping spree. We experienced life without social media, but we also remember getting our first Nokia and the magic of MSN Messenger. And we watched in awe as computers went from enormous desktop towers to sleek little rectangles we now carry around in our pockets.
We had dial-up internet and floppy disks, but we also built our first websites on GeoCities and wrote painstaking HTML in Notepad. We remember MySpace before Facebook and how thrilling it was to burn your own CD mixes. We lived through the Y2K panic, wore chokers, ankle bracelets, and Kickers, and watched Friends live, not on Netflix. We worshipped the TV and waited weeks for new films to arrive on VHS. In our teenage years, many of us were into Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, The Prodigy and LTJ Bukem. We loved The Word and EuroTrash. Some of us got stoned on purpose to enjoy playing WipeOut on the first-ever PlayStation. We bought MixMag for the gig and club listings. We remember festivals before they became a fashion parade. And yes, some of us took drugs and travelled the world. I certainly did. Fridays were once sacred, too, and Tim Westwood’s jingle on Radio One always marked the beginning of another weekend.
We’re a small generation, often overlooked, but we’ve lived through more change than most—from mixtapes to Spotify, from faxes to WhatsApp, from digital revolution to AI. And because we existed in that liminal space, we carry a weird dual wisdom: we know how to live offline, but we can thrive online, too.
We understand the value of privacy and impermanence because we remember a time before everything was public and permanent. And maybe that’s why so many of us are quietly deleting our social media accounts and leaning into real life again — books, dinners, walks, actual phone calls. Imagine!
We were also Cool Britannia — all about unity, not division. One love. It makes me sad to see what social media has done to the world — all the anxiety, the polarisation, the performance. And honestly? I’m quietly pleased to see its grip loosening.
These days, I sometimes catch myself muttering at the telly, shaking my head at a clueless reality show contestant, thinking: You just wait, sunshine. You’ll get old, too. And yes, I do roll my eyes at some of the newer buzzwords. But I try to check myself. Because if ageing has taught me anything, it’s that the biggest danger is certainty.
That’s the tension, isn’t it? The constant tug-of-war between feeling grumpy and still clinging to some version of youth. I never thought I’d be that person. But here I am.
Yes, getting older can mean becoming stuck or rigid. But ironically, I’ve seen just as much of that in younger people lately — unwilling to listen, quick to judge, terrified of being wrong. When nuanced debate disappears, we stop growing. And the less we challenge ourselves, the dumber we become, not smarter.
So here’s what I try to remember, at any age: stay curious. Never assume you’re right. Read the newspapers you’d generally avoid. Challenge even your most cherished opinions. Try to see more than one side. You won’t always succeed, but it’s worth the effort.
Because if growing older has taught me anything, it’s this: certainty is overrated, and listening is wildly underrated. Cosy nights in don’t mean you’ve given up. They just mean you know what you like — and that maybe, just maybe, you never truly loved going to gigs as much as you pretended to. You stop performing. You stop pretending. And that’s freedom.
It’s a funny thing, ageing. You get clearer on who you are, while also realising how much you still don’t know.
Being this age doesn’t mean your mind is closed. And youth doesn’t automatically mean fun. We’re all just figuring ourselves out, no matter the year on our birth certificate.
Getting older isn’t a bad thing. It’s when things get interesting. But no matter how old you are, stay curious. That’s the only thing worth clinging to.