Ageing is a complicated and messy business. And it’s different for everyone. My father, who turns 80 at the end of this year, claims it comes in sudden bursts every seven years; for others, the cold stare of reality in the bathroom mirror is a daily reminder. My own moment of reckoning came at 12.23am on Tuesday night.
I had been at a fish and chip supper with a shoe brand, which turned out to be very jolly as I’ve known most of the guests since the Nineties. As things wrapped up, there was talk of heading into Soho to carry on the fun. It’s worth noting that I live five minutes up the road from the restaurant but, instead of walking home to bed, I jumped in a cab with two of my middle-aged friends and one Bright Young Thing who seemed hell-bent on going to Little Italy on Frith Street. Little Italy, it turns out, is an Italian restaurant that by night transforms into a shockingly lit dancefloor filled with London’s entire population of 19-year-old nepo babies all pogoing to ‘Nineties classics’ (cue Daft Punk bangers). I have never felt so old, so quickly.
After catching sight of my reflection looking like a beleaguered geography teacher at a school disco, I did what any sensible grown-up would do: grabbed my fiftysomething-year-old friends and went to Gerry’s Club for a stiff drink. My thoughts kept returning to something the wonderful Laura Dern says in this week’s cover interview: ‘It’s a vulnerable but deeply inspiring time to figure out what being a grown-up means.’ Quite. And besides: who pogoes to French electro-house, anyway?
