This coming Wednesday I’ll be 45 (Forty five) years old. I’ve spelt it out as they used to do that on the vidiprinter on Grandstand when a team scored a high amount of goals against the other team! I think it’s official confirmation that I’m middle aged, well that’s if I’m lucky enough to live until the grand old age of 90! I’m at the age where I have more hairs growing out of my ears and my nose than on my head!

As of yet I’ve not really had a midlife crisis, maybe writing the blog is the beginning of it! I’m just FIVE years away from being 50! It’s also FIFTEEN years ago since my 30th! I remember when I was 18 and first started going to the pub with my mates, we never went out that often on a Saturday night as it was the ‘oldies’ night, the average age of the people out that night probably would’ve only been 30, if that! We all have this perception of age, ‘Life begins at 40′, ’50 is the new 30’ etc. Probably for the people in these age groups the answer is yes it does but it would be interesting to know what age this generation of young adults perceive to be middle aged.

Once Mila-Rose and Alfie hit ‘Sweet Sixteen’, myself and Louise will be closer to our sixties than our fifties! They’ll probably bring their boyfriends and girlfriends home to meet us and upon leaving the new love of their life will probably ask “Why do you live with your Grandparents???”. I’m only joking and to be honest in my head I still feel as if I’m in my thirties. I remember looking at ‘older’ people when I was younger and they all dressed like Ena Sharples! They were probably only in their mid 50s but looked about 80 years old!

I don’t actually think I’d change too much in my life and I’m really happy where I’m at now. I remember during adolescence and in particular my late teens that I really lacked confidence in myself and how I looked, I’ve always had quite a skinny frame so I would always buying clothes about three sizes too big and wore layer upon layer to bulk myself up! When I look back at some the pictures I look like the guy in the waiting room in Beetlejuice!

One thing I always remember about those times would be only having one telephone in our family home and bear in mind that mobile phones didn’t exist so if a new girl was on the scene I used to dread either having to ring them up to arrange a date or them ringing me up as the phone was in the living room! I was quite shy around girls and it was hard enough finding the courage to speak to them in the first place but having the whole conversation listened to by your Mum, Dad and Sister was even more excruciating! So I would like to issue an apology to any ex-girlfriends who I spoke to on the phone in the nineties, I wasn’t being rude or sharp it was just awkward!

I think by my early twenties I was starting find a bit more confidence in myself. I had worked in retail since the age of 16 and when the Trafford Centre opened in 1998, I started to work at the Levi’s store. Here I was amidst a lot of cool and confident 16-25 year olds who really brought me out of my shell. It was a real confidence booster. To this very day I’d say it’s the best job I’ve had, mainly due to the fact that it wasn’t like going to work but more like going on a night out!

My thirties started with a bang with a memorable trip to Dublin to celebrate! Skinny Jeans were all the rage and looking back at all those years of buying larger clothes to cover my skinny frame everything was now as tight as possible! I didn’t really worry about how I looked as I had not only grown in age but also in confidence. I would say that I really knew who I was, what I wanted from life and that lead me to getting married to my beautiful wife and having the two most adorable children.

I’ll finish with this story and I remember this really, really hot girl when I was 18/19 who used to go out in my home town of Leigh and I really fancied her. We nicknamed her Catwoman as she used to wear this catsuit on occasions, myself and my mates would purr like Austin Powers when she walked past! I used to think she was way out of my league and for years, due to the fear of rejection, I never asked her out. Almost 18 years after we first set eyes on each other, she became my Wife! It turned out she had always fancied me and always wanted me to ask her out!

The moral of that story is to not hold back as only YOU can make things happen!

People may perceive ‘older’ adulthood to be a negative experience and probably want to avoid it as it’s painful to think yourself as being old but you can still enrich your life when you’re older. Who knows us oldies may even be happier than some of the younger generation, after all we didn’t have the pressure of social media when we were young!

Have a great week,

Kieron