Stuck in the Middle Ages.

Last week's post was a little depressing. It was about how the world seems to lose its magic as you get older but it's not all bad. There are distinct benefits to becoming middle aged. Instead of being an uphill struggle through the treacherous foothills of life, the path seems to flatten out and things become a little easier. You have time to catch your breath and take in the scenery. You can see the summit shrouded in mist in the far off distance but you are still a long way from being over the hill. You're in a position to look back on the path you've travelled and congratulate yourself on your achievements and how far you've come. You can also look back on those poor sods travelling behind you and throw stones at them while mocking them mercilessly.

There are some excellent advantages to being slightly the wrong side of young. For example, you are not put under any peer pressure because you are too weird and cranky to have any peers. You can be as uncool as you like because you don't give a toss which then makes you ubercool and sophisticated, and, if you are still hopelessly uncool, no one cares. If you want to wear green tartan trousers with beige shoes crack on. No one will laugh at you, well not to your face anyway.

Then there's the stress and strain of the career ladder. There you are climbing for the sky when you notice that your particular ladder only has two rungs on it and you've barely made it off the ground. You reach a point where you come to realise that your employers have been taking advantage of you for years and you've probably progressed as far as you're going to. You stop trying to impress the boss and start wondering if you should take more sickies. You come to understand that the 'work life balance' actually means being at work as little as possible.

It's much easier to be a crook when you're middle aged because everybody knows all criminals are under thirty and wear hoodies. Nobody expects the nice man with greying hair to shoplift or steal a wallet. You can quite literally get away with murder, just look at Harold Shipman. The only exceptions to this are Irish travellers who are deemed automatically guilty or, if you are a paunchy, male singleton with a comb-over then you're probably a paedophile. Everyone else is in the clear.

Another advantage to being more mature is the ability to lie outrageously due to the natural authority and gravitas granted by age. You can talk convincingly about things you have the barest grasp of and the younger generations will always believe you. People would rather hear news from a person who looks the part than a younger person with experience or qualifications, that's how politicians get away with it. No one takes young doctors, teachers or policeman seriously.

Your children will always be your children they say but there comes a time when they have jobs of their own, can pay their own way and they can look after themselves, up to a point. The worries of childcare arrangements become a distant memory and you can take your holidays outside of term time when it's considerably cheaper, hence more holidays. No more do you have to face the guilt-ridden choice of a new handbag or new school shoes for little Johnny. Now you're older, the handbag wins every time.

Probably one of the fun things about being older is that you can constantly abuse and belittle the younger generations with phrases that begin with the words ' in my day' or ' you don't know your born'. You can point out that their useless, lazy and ungrateful by inventing Dickensian style hardships that you used to endure when you were young and they will never be in a position to prove you wrong. It's a well-known fact that everything was better in the old days and who from the younger generations is in a position to say different.

Ps. it's also much easier to frighten small children.