I'm 45 and a half. Here's what I know

Plus clubbing with twentysomethings

Blurry, but here I am at La Discotheque, a club night at London’s Printworks

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. Happy springtime, and I hope you’re still refreshed this morning after an hour less in bed.

Today I’m writing about the joy of mid-life and what wisdom I think I have at this point. I hope some of it is useful.

But first: going out-out.

The other night, I went clubbing with my neighbours over the road, who are about 20 years younger than me.

‘We love that you’re coming clubbing with us’ one of them said.

And they loved the fact that of the group of six, I was the only one who had previously been dancing at the place we were going to - Printworks, a 5000-capacity club in London’s Docklands that is housed in a cavernous former newspaper printing factory and attracts some of the world’s best-known DJs.

I will be very lucky if, at 45 and a half, I am now at the midpoint of my life.

The night was called La Discotheque and we got there about 11pm, by which time we were all starving, so after a Nutella pizza in the club’s courtyard we headed for the main room, which was packed.

On the lineup were about 10 DJs including Grammy-nominated producer Jayda G and former Hacienda DJ Greg Wilson.

On the dancefloor during Wilson’s set around 2.30am, a guy in a football shirt started chatting to me.

“What’s your name?” he said. “I’m James.”

I was a bit drunk, so instead of telling him my name I asked him how old he was. Thirty-five, he said.

“I’m 45, I’m middle-aged!” I yelled in response.

“No, you’re not, you’re really not middle-aged” he said, trying to be nice, maybe trying to reassure me that I wasn’t too old to be there.

The funny thing is, I was absolutely delighted to be telling this random man that I am middle-aged.

In fact, I will be very lucky if, at 45 and a half, I am now at the midpoint of my life.

“What’s your name?” he asked again.

At which point I recognised the opening bars of one of my favourite songs – Love Sensation, a 1980 track by disco singer Loleatta Hollway (later sampled in Ride on Time by Black Box), and I rushed away from him and into a space on the dancefloor to jump up and down and fling my arms around.

Acceptance is often the key to contentment. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do about a shit situation than name it as such.

Why am I telling you this? I guess as a reflection of how I now feel about life.

When I was twentysomething, if a man in a club tried to chat me up, I’d probably have felt flattered and happy – maybe that’s why I’d gone out in the first place.

Now when I go dancing, the music and the feeling of collective enjoyment come first.

I still love dressing up, putting on makeup and feeling attractive, but these days it’s more like jeans, trainers and a backless top rather than a tight skirt and heels. Also, I don’t really mind if I’m older/younger than everyone else in the place.

I think I get some of this sense of abandon and enjoyment from my mother. When she was in her early 60s, she and a friend went skiing, heading to a bar after a long day on the slopes.

The Weather Girls song It’s Raining Men started playing and they jumped off their stools and clomped (in their ski boots) as fast as they could to the middle of the empty dance floor where they whirled around delighted as the much younger crowd watched and clapped and the barman gave them a free drink afterwards.

I love that story, but it also makes me ask why ‘older’ people dancing are so unusual and wonder why clubs are mainly seen as a young person’s thing.

If this is mid-life, I want to keep dancing for the second half.

And with this in mind, here are a few things I think I know about life, aged 45 and a half:

• I give way less of a shit about most things now (and apparently, this feeling grows as you get older – see Helen Mirren on not giving a ‘flying fuck’ about not looking as good as she did when younger). I didn’t really like a photo of me that appeared on a piece I wrote for a paper a while ago, and I spent about 2 minutes being concerned about it. Then I realised it didn’t matter.

• Related to this: the people who mind don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t mind. I used to worry about what ‘people’ would think about my life choices/hairstyle/taste in curtains, but the only people whose opinions or concerns mean anything are those I love.

• Exercise is necessary. I didn’t do any in my 20s, took up yoga in my 30s and always had a nagging feeling I would need to take it much more seriously at some vague time in the future.

  I’ve now reached that point, due to a combination of vanity and worrying about osteoporosis, and exercise about three times a week with ambitions for more.

• Frustrating as it is, you can’t really change other people, you can only alter your attitude or mindset towards them.

• Acceptance is often the key to contentment. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do about a shit situation than name it as such. And along similar lines, ‘this too shall pass’ applies to both positive and negative things. Treasure the great moments and acknowledge the bad.

• Small things make me happy. Clean sheets, a soft rug, a hot water bottle most nights for most months of the year, some new hand cream and a bunch of daffodils are things that give me comfort often.

Things I like

What is happiness, anyway?

The Guardian’s series ‘What makes me happy now’ is a lovely collection of the things that help people be content, from running through puddles to Aretha Franklin, and the essay by 80 year-old Helen Garner on things overheard and tiny scenes that have made her smile is delightful.

Money, Money, Money

Ok I only used that heading to get your attention. It’s one of my favourite Abba songs, but aside from that, I’m getting my finances in order. And I used the pension calculator on the Money Helper website to work out how much I might want/need (and therefore how much I need to save now) when I’m in my 60s and ready to hit the ski slopes, and the bar…