Janet Christie's Mum's the Word - Another birthday? Bring it on

“Happy Birthday!” Youngest Child bursts into my bedroom and places a mug of tea next to me.

I don’t think it’s my birthday, but it’s too soon in the day to be sure, so I go with it.

“Ah wait. It’s not your birthday,” she says. Busted. I grip tight onto my mug.

“It’s my friend’s birthday. Yours is next month. That card I’ve bought is for her.”

I like this about her. The way she blithely explains to her perplexed Irish friends that Belfast and Dublin are the same in her head because they both have two syllables and a big L in the middle, or that cling film and tin foil are indistinguishable because the words both contain ‘in’ and start with ‘f’ so which should she use, prompting her follow up question: “how do you know if you’ve broken the microwave?” Answer: Trust me, you know.

I don’t care whether it’s my birthday or not, I’ll take all the cups of tea in bed I can get. Plus I’m happy the years are stacking up. I’m glad I’m still here, unlike too many friends and relatives who didn’t get to embrace change and all the extra happy times.

I don’t agree with the fixation with age, especially around women - it smacks of ageism and misogyny. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard people using the phrase ‘middle aged women’ as a negative, and it’s usually ‘middle-aged men’ reluctantly clinging to their youth despite evidence to the contrary. I blame TV and film with all those older men paired with women decades younger - in your dreams, pal. Whatever. I don’t regard myself as middle aged anyway - I prefer old. Chuck in wise, beyond caring and the promise of free bus travel and I’m your woman.

It’s a movable feast, middle age, as I found out dating someone who had described their motorbike and sports car purchases as symptoms of their middle age crisis and it later turned out they meant at 25. Oops. Cue graceful retreat - see wise.

The government agrees with me about ageing. Why else keep pushing back the age at which we get our pensions? If it keeps on at this rate my generation will never retire, working till we drop, which is just as well because we can’t afford it. But why worry, I’ve got another birthday on its way.