I remember being so excited about getting a new digital watch for my 10th birthday that during school class that day I skipped out to the toilet just to adore and polish my snazzy new piece of technology. 30 years on and I'm feeling a bit the same way about the new analogue watch my brother and his wife gave me last week for my 40th birthday - except I can polish it whenever I like. It feels good to wear a watch again, especially one that I was given as a birthday gift. In some ways I don't feel much different at 40 to how I did when I was 10 - I'm the same person now as I was then; it's all been in there since day dot. I'm able to feel things just as much, I've hung on to my childlike sense of humour, and I haven't deadened my sensitivity.
I considered not having a 40th party - I'm not usually the party-throwing type - but I'm glad I stepped up and threw one, and that my wife did such a good job of making it happen. Turning 40 is an achievement, and should be marked with a celebration. Having survived your tumultuous twenties and thirties you've well and truly made it to middle age. Victor Hugo said that "forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age", which would suggest that between 40 and 50 is a sort of no-man's-land (it's most definitely a no-adolescent's-land!), in which I think I'll enjoy being stuck for a decade. Who wants to fit in anyway?
