Is 80 the new 45? ‘How my children lifted my midlife blues with the terror of death’

The first time I was described as middle-aged was in a comedy review when I was 37. I think the reviewer was in his twenties and I was complaining about parenthood so he put two and two together – but I certainly didn’t recognise myself by that description. Now I’m 46 and the slur is well-aimed. My belly springs forward like a rottweiler smelling meat.

The pigment leaves my hair by slow evaporation; I know the hair will follow, like a dandelion clock in the wind. My glands mix new cocktails: after a stressful day I can now smell like the 1970s care home of unkind caricature. Spectacles clarify text. I mellow, I pick my battles. I pick paint colours. To risk I grow averse, though the risks of inaction still carry slightly more dread, 52 to 48 say, a laughable margin. I’m settling down.

Lots of people are glum when they compare their newer tortoise selves to the hares they used to be. Allow me to cheer you up by pointing out the relative positives, courtesy of my kids and their biology homework. At the age of 45, my children insensitively informed me when I hit that medical milestone last year, we can, technically speaking, die of OLD AGE.

Let that sink in for a moment! I could keel over right now and not inspire a coroner’s best work. Imagine his grunt – the short grunt he would emit as he registered the timely death of a 46-year-old male. Would he even grunt? Perhaps if I caught him early enough in his career I could get a grunt out of him.

Later and with more bodies under his belt he might downshift to a snort: a nasal exhalation slightly accelerated by expressive pressure, to mark the death of a clown. There’s the obituary of course – but what kind of reading could it make? “RIP Dan. He made some comedy audiences laugh, releasing endorphins, and some angry, which was good for their circulation. He filled his stomach and voided his bowel and tried not to throw away plastic. He drove his kids to that climate change march. He would have liked more notice of this audit.”

So I hope I am middle-aged, now that Death has snuck up behind me, brandishing his actuarial tables! But not just because doing my final accounts is as repellent a prospect as doing my accounts at any other time. I have places to go and people to see. I want to visit Mali, where that music I like is made. I want to visit America more, before all the gloss comes off it.

I want to see my children have children – and I want to see my children do a four-nappy change and laughingly refuse to help them while their infant prodigy adds surprise extra codas to its second movement. Of course, there are things I haven’t done and never will, like get super-buff or give up cheese. When Rick Astley sang “Never Gonna Give You Up” he might have been talking about me and cheese – but there is still a lot to do.

So I hope there is more. There should be: I got into the life expectancy market at a pretty good time, after a century of exponential advances in medicine and public health. A 45-year-old in the Britain of 1900 would have been well advised to have his affairs in order; but I will be surprised not to hit my mid-seventies, and my offspring can be confident of reaching 80, maybe 90 – although I can’t see them having their affairs in order, if their bedrooms are any predictor.

Even the number of centenarians is becoming significant: there are more than 14,000 people in the UK older than the treaty of Versailles. The Queen must watch this mounting statistic with alarm; RSI is no joke when you are the one signing the birthday cards. By the time Prince George is on the throne, most of his time will be taken up congratulating centenarians for waking up that morning – you can forget the ribbon-cutting for the new obstetrics wing.

But does this movement at the top of the Longevity bell curve drag the other bell curves up with it? Are we middle-aged longer before the tricky last bit? Is life the same shape but stretched?

It is not. We have indeed extended the healthy years, but not without also disproportionately extending the final chapter of sharp pain, dull discomfort and the bewildering unravelling of proficiency. Terror of non-existence is powerful, but we can look almost wistfully at those who left the party in full swing, while we watch the streamers go lank and the balloons deflate.

The truth is that by design we weren’t supposed to hang around after genetic replication. Nature is clear: you breed, you die. You get eaten by worms, then by a fish then a king. You make a contribution. You don’t hang around playing mah jong, you donate your body to the soil. Ageing is cheating!

But if 80 is the new 45, then let us chortle as we cheat. And let us not outlive our capacity for enjoyment, but go at just the right time, by fire, after a last meal of popcorn kernels. And let us be middle-aged until that festive day. And let us go at least once to Mali and listen to the joyful music, drowning out nature’s petulant, nagging, gruesome, mundane cry: “YOU OWE ME A CORPSE!”