This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

Actually more like when I was fifteen.

Haven't exactly been bombarded by deelyboppers and pop socks around these parts.

Shoreham - liminal, but copper messy.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

I had my midlife crisis from the ages of approx 15-42 so I reckon I'm due uncomplicated happiness now.

This thread is so much like me at an FAP that it's spooking me out.

Yeah, I'm drinking here at work, too.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me. -- Rock Hardy

As per suits, I don't think I've got any I fit into anymore.
On the, er, thinner side: I amn't that dirty really.

Just don't recognise anything in this thread. Including the posts I posted so that suggests it was probably a crap idea. Oh well, it was worth a momentary try.

Please to God never let me actually become a "fortysomething."

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething? (I bet I have most of them).

I can legally have an affair with someone half my age!

so, is anyone on for it?

thread is otm, though now I can also see how it mightn't be otm, and would not be surprised to find myself arguing either side of the question for fifteen minutes or so before getting completely distracted by some other stray thought

They say memory is the second thing to go. I can't remember the first one.

My drug of choice these days is Back and Body aspirin, for that extra frisson of caffeine.

Memory is going, true, but at least I remember the 70s

Memory is going, true, but at least I have begun forgetting the 70's.

hi.

um, I'm OK.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething?

Being aged between 40 and 49. Anyway I though we were all 'middle youths' nowadays.

sorry to have woken you oldtimers up . but. I misread Marcello's OP as

Yes, I know, creeping balkanisation etc. but why should we be left out?

But please leave cheeky Ovaries at the door.

-- Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 2:35 PM (7 hours ago)

I'll have you know my ovaries are extremely well-behaved; veritable paragons of polite ovarian society.

The ovaries are fine, but I'm prone to brain farts now.

The world's worst song.

Comparing your ovary to a Bronte C/D?

Wuthering Ovaries

Thrustcrotch Minge

Carry On Bronteing

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

-- Rock Hardy

^^^

haven't you all heard - us 40+'rs are saving the music industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stevelamacq/2008/08/to_bb_or_not_to_bb.html

Come on - you're not too old to have forgotten this thread already...
I am too old for this...the 40 plus thread.

Don't even remember that thread but this one could do with a few more ovaries...

my right knee

wait, is your right knee also my right knee. Because - my right knee.

No knee problems, but a lingering cough and all.

my left knee

Knees still fine, but ow my aching fibroid. Roll on the menopause, please.

back pain... bruised rib?

Have you banged a rib?

Not that I remember ... had a sidewalk fall about 6 weeks ago but I'm positive I landed on knees.

I always have back pain. I just attribute it to "lol old, also sit up straight dummy" at this point.

Had surgery three weeks ago to correct a compressed ulnar nerve in my left arm. Incision is taking it's sweet time healing all the way.

The rest of my 40s are going to suck, aren't they.

Upper, lower, middle back, Morbz?

left middle-lower

Saggy mattress? I can definitely trace my back pain to mattress + increasing girth.

Yeah, I try to sleep flat on my back w/a pillow under my knees when I get back pain.

well I sleep with my bed titled to ease the acid reflux. But yeah, mattress is old and crap.

Lord Paillasse?

Tilted means your back is still bearing weight.

usually sleep on my side (the right since pain started obv)

but pain is not as bad as it was in January.

Seen a chiropractor at all or anybody, really?

as an ILXOR in my 40s, I can confirm that GOOD POSTURE is urgent and key - even making the effort to sit up straighter at yr desk can have a tremendously positive effect on neck and back pain

i had my ear surgery last week. it was a big deal and i assume there are lots of people out there who have the same issue, but live in a place where the diagnosis would not have happened and the surgeon wouldn't live in their town. kind of got mad at him because right when i woke up post surgery he tells me for the first time that i'm not allowed to blow my nose for 10 days. mfer, it's mid April and pollen is everywhere. i have literal scabs on my nose from blowing it so much. not sure if it's a 40s thing, but my allergies have gone from 0 to 100 in the last few years

how's ya hearing?

I hope your surgery went well, Heez. Rather frequently, my right ear gets completely clogged up and I also cannot pick out individual speakers or tell where sounds are coming from. It really struck me how having even just a marginally difficult time hearing can immediately feel isolating.

Getting old is so f’in weird

Seconded.

Hope I don’t die soon!

Planning to live to 90 like my grandparents done did

Every time I get carded I’m like, “this is the last time I’m gonna get carded”

/romero

last got ID'd in Morrisons of all places when I was 40. I assume that will be the last time unless I go back to the USA at some point or somewhere else where they card OAPs

I get that they think I’m a narc…I guess

fell in the bathtub this morning. cut my chin open. i wouldn't call it a serious fall, but at my age i can't just brush off falls like i could when i was younger. scariest thing is that i live by myself. i mean i don't feel like i'm the age where i'd want a lifealert bracelet or something but yeah, if i seriously hurt myself by accident it'd be a while before anybody came to check. had a pretty bad fall last december... was on my way out to an event, it was icy, forgot something upstairs, went up the outside stairs too quickly and banged myself up. still went to the event, though, without even so much as cleaning myself up. i guess i can say i'm learning - i wouldn't do that today. i think the fall back in december was probably worse. hard to say. it's getting around. my balance has never been good. i had a fall in my garage back in '19 and my ankle stability has been really bad ever since.

anyway my QPP is gonna be over in a bit to check... in the meantime i'm just shook... got a towel in my mouth waiting for the bleeding to stop.

I turned 40 last week. Woof. For some perspective, I started reading ILX as a teenager so not only am I old, we’re all old.

I was 20 at the beginning and now 44, so I feel every year of that comment.

welcome, Allen

Hi!

Did you just turn 40

yes, it's my 40th birthday

Happy birthday : )

happy birthday!

Thank you!

Hb!

I will be bang on 45 in August.

I used to sneeze in twos and threes, now its fours and fives

Welcome fellow kids!

Don't you mean welcome in?

One year and a summer left on my ticket

how much is being old supposed to hurt?
not physically
in my soul
it hurts in my soul

i was never _young_
i never will be _young_

i feel _wrong_. i feel like something... that there's something i need and i don't have, can't have
all of those years that were taken from me
there's nothing in their place. half my life is just _missing_ and i'm supposed to act like it's ok and it's _not ok_
is it _ok_ for y'all? do you ever want to vomit digital artifacts and scream and cry for nothing, for no reason at all? is it just me?

i don't know
47
hitting 47 was _hard_

Tired: leaving a party early due to limb pain

Wired: leaving it due to severe constipation

Though I blamed my knees

I’ll take all those woes and raise you one perimenopause.

Just got reading glasses (1.5x).
When I look at my phone it feels like a pro max and my monitor looks like a fuckin’ Vision Pro

Purely by coincidence I recently passed my motorcycle test. That's not a middle-aged thing. Not at all. But it does mean that I now have a legitimate reason to own a pair of leather trousers. And one of those Arab-style scarves that Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman wore in Long Way Round. The melancholic thing is that McGregor and Boorman were in their thirties in 2004. They were a decade ahead of me. It pains me to think that 2004 was twenty years ago.

NB I do actually own a pair of leather trousers. They have a zip around the waist that zips into a compatible motorcycle jacket, thus making an all-in-one zipped-up suit, and yes this sentence is a reference to Alan Partridge's monologue about buying surround speakers for his miniature hi-fi. I do not however own a BMW 1250GS but there is still time.

It's odd re-watching Long Way Round in 2024. It was shot with early-2000s digital video. Even the crappest Youtube motorcycle people have hi-def headcams and drones nowadays. But only a few of them have any charisma. There's a great Youtube motorcyclist called Itchy Boots, who recently broke her collarbone in Tanzania, but she's ace. And another one called Doodle on a Motorcycle who is tiny, but has no trouble riding larger bikes.

Motorcycles are a triumph of hope over reality. Every time I hop on my motorcycle I think about the sad people in their cars. I have to put on a bunch of safety gear, while they just get in their cars. How sad is that? When I arrive at my destination I take off my gloves and helmet and unzip my jacket and chain up the bike, while sad people in their cars just sort of get out of their car. Who has the last laugh? It's them, isn't it. Semi-detatched suburban Mr Jones. They have the last laugh.

To date I have been waved at by a small boy in a Spiderman suit. I have had a middle-aged man ask me about parking charges. I have not yet had any luck with women. And although I'm 100% heterosexual, not a single man has offered to tie me up in my leather gear while spanking my testicles with a fly swatter. I would politely decline, but it would be gratifying if someone asked.

Behind all of this light banter is the realisation that, yes, I'm half-way through life. Except that the first few years didn't count, because I was a kid, and the last few years aren't going to be much fun, so I'm actually two-thirds of the way through life. And death is a permanent black abyss of nothingness, an unavoidable black abyss of nothingness that I can only avoid by drinking myself into oblivion. But on the other hand one of my uncles never left the county of Wiltshire in his whole life, so I've faced with the horrible suspicion that I have actually achieved more in my life - despite struggling constantly with poverty - than most of my immediate family, and that millions of desperate refugees would kill and die to swap places with me, so perhaps I should keep my existential crises to myself.

And although I'm 100% heterosexual, not a single man has offered to tie me up in my leather gear while spanking my testicles with a fly swatter. I would politely decline, but it would be gratifying if someone asked.

consider yourself officially asked, lmao.

i feel like i've been in a mid-life crisis for the last 5 years, and i'm only 41 - still time to do the motorcycle thing but not the money, sadly, and idk i'm more scared about the crash statistics than i used to be. anyway i support any and all mid-life motorcycle flings.

I guess this is a midlife crisis mindset, just really thinking a lot about how there are a finite number of times I will do certain things again, how I’m running out of time to accelerate my career, thinkin about how much older
I am than other people, listening to the offspring… prob some depression mixed in