I'll be forty in less than a year.

It frightens me more than man eating tigers ridden by flying monkeys with killer bees in their mouths chasing me off the edge of a huge cliff in a small dark enclosed space made of blackboards and nails into a pit of spiders.

So what do you suggest I do about it?

according to normal humans and theyre stupid "sayings" you wil be precisly 0 years old

I dont belive in the "life begins at 40" maybe only applies to England?

I voted for younger women, flash car and alcohol.

Although preferably not at the same time.

Ooh! That remided me of one of my favourite descriptions of how someone died (I think it was Douglas Adams).

"He died from an overdose of brick wall taken with a bottle of whiskey and a Ferrari."

Or something like that anyway

::EDIT:: I was close...

[He] died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.

LOL, I'm ashamed to say I don't remember that quote.

Now there was a guy who gave me plenty to laugh about. What a great legacy he left us!

It's from The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, the first Douglas Adams book that I read.

There are some truly awesome lines in that book. Here's a few more from wikiquote that I remember...

It was a battered yellow Citroën 2CV which had had one careful owner but also three suicidally reckless ones.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Dirk was unused to making such a minuscule impact on anybody. He checked to be sure that he did have his huge leather coat and his absurd red hat on and that he was properly and dramatically silhouetted by the light of the doorway. He felt momentarily deflated and said, "Er..." by way of self-introduction, but it didn't get the boy's attention. He didn't like this. The kid was deliberately and maliciously watching television at him.

ROFL

Infact, why don't I just copy and paste the whole book here

I just realised that it sounded like that was a description of how Douglas Adams died. I meant the quote was written by DA about one of the characters in his book

I did actually ponder that when I read it, but I was fairly sure I would have remembered if that was the case! It was very much his style. I mean the prose, not the life.

I kinda wish it had been somhow

40 it get's better honestly.

Cheese pie and BEER!

Mum hated turning forty four of five years ago, after a year or two she realised that the number didn't make a difference, she still felt young and is going off to more gigs than before and going out with friends down the pub, etc...Which she did very rarely in her thirties...

There is still hope

Speaking with authority from the other side of 40, I can say it's not really a problem. Life is what you make it, so you just have to accept that it's a sexually transmitted terminal disease and get on with it. No-one gets out of life alive.*

I didn't vote for younger women, because I'm not sure that's my bag right now. I did vote Pie and Cheese, but then thought that's probably not the best solution, what with middle-aged spread and all that.

Hey, there is an up side: those forms where you tick a box against your age range? You can move up one!





*That's a misquote from another scifi author, Raymond E Feist.

It doesn't really change anything.

Cheese Pie is a good way to celebrate it.

Just don't fret about it, it is coming and you can't do anything about it, and it doesn't change a single thing!

I found the love of my life (a younger woman, but only 5 months younger) just before I turned 40 and we are having the best time of our lives, without having to indulge in alcohol, fast cars or anything else... Just each other.

Same here.

And I won't be seeing forty again either

I have a feeling they're a cure for pretty much anything. In so far as you may still be 40/dieing of a terminal illness/about to be impeached, you just don't care any more.

I was 40 mere months ago. Absolutely nothing at all has changed, other than the fact all the machines at the gym are now telling me I'm overdoing it a bit earlier. Since they did that anyway, I really don't consider that a significant event. And I had about a month of partying, which I actually consider a plus. So overall I'd say being 40 has done me no real harm at all.

Jon

I will also be 40 next year and I have already considered which sports car to buy. I was going with an Audi TT 225BHP until the new car tax laws were talked about. Then I found out that the old TT is not a particularly good car- compared to the new one it sounds awful. I think that by the time the recession is over, I might have saved enough for a new model TT, but we'll see.

As for a younger woman, it depends on whether you already have one and want to live to 41!

Re' Douglas Adams; one of my all-time favourite lines-

Several, yellow, slab-like somethings; huge as office blocks, silent as birds. They hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don't.

Just deal with it!!



I'll never understand the obsession with age, if you start to think of it as anything other than "just a number" then you give it the power to make you happy or miserable. Age is merely a marker of the number of years you've existed, it doesn't dictate your behaviour, actions, thoughts or attitudes unless you let it!!

I firmly believe that although I may be growing old, there is no rule stating that I have to grow up. I plan to celebrate my 40th by getting my motorbike license and then buying a chopper or a Harley, I plan to grow old disgracefully, and I am really looking forward to being the eccentric old woman of the village, scaring the kids who will all think I'm a witch, owning stinky dogs and black cats and developing a really good throaty cackle!!

My youth wasn't anything to shout about, I am looking forward to getting older !!

My favourite Douglas Adams: