41: A Difficult Birthday

As birthdays go, 40 was, surprisingly, OK. I think turning 40 is OK for most women, provided you’re vaguely “well-preserved”, simply because it sounds so definitively middle-aged you’re just pleased you don’t look like Patty Croker yet.

Sunset on Batu Belig, Bali.

You take a look at yourself in the mirror, establish that your arse still sticks out above your thighs rather than dangling around your knees, your boobs aren’t golf balls in a sock but, actually, really not bad for this oh-so-very advanced age, find your stomach a lot flatter than it deserves to be, given you’re in your fifth decade, have a child, and last went to a gym during the late 1990s for about five minutes before you popped out for a fag and never came back, and go, “Woo! Yeah! I look GREAT for my age, me! FORTY! BRING IT ON!”

Then you neck half a bottle of gin in the form of expensive cocktails and start bollocking on about wisdom, maturity, self-knowledge and how you only wish you knew how beautiful you were when you were 19, and OMG OMG did you know we’re all going to die at some point? Then someone (depending on how good your friends are) either hits you over the head with a blunt instrument and chucks a blanket over you or calls a taxi.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Whatevs, I was remarkably sanguine about entering my fifth decade. What with 40 being the new 25, and all that, and what with all those women in their sixties who tell you your forties are really great, forty was fine. I’d be lying to say forty was GREAT, exactly, but I was down with forty.

When it came to age, my fortieth year passed largely in a cavalcade of smugness, helped by the Bali lifestyle. It’s extremely hard to be properly whiney when you live in a tropical climate with a garden full of fruit trees and a swimming pool, with an outstanding surfing beach on your doorstep, and when what passes for a commute tends to involve biking through ricefields, especially when you’ve spent most of your adult life in dark, chilly London and you feel like you’re on holiday the whole time.

Yes, that’s even if the water does routinely go off because you’re too cheap to buy a new water-pump, and you’d rather keep flushing the loos with swimming pool water while waiting for the guy to come and mend it for $5 than spend $200 on a new one.

Of course, one slight disadvantage of the Bali lifestyle for the more, ahem, mature woman is not only the wardrobe – it’s not unusual to socialise in a bikini and rare to socialise in more than a tank top and shorts – but that one lives surrounded by women who don’t have much to do all day but boss the staff around and keep their bodies bikini-ready.

Still, body anxieties aside, forty was… Forty was, well, fine, really. Forty was more than fine. Forty was way, WAY better than expected.

Forty-one, on the other hand, was notably less fine. You see, as you approach forty-one, the novelty of being forty kind of wears off, or at least it did for me. Quite frankly, I’d had enough of being forty, and was strongly of the opinion that this fifth decade lark could stop now, and life could go back to normal. The realisation that forty wouldn’t just bugger off to whatever hellpit it came from but would graunch inexorably, arthritically towards fifty and (eeeeeek!) beyond is one I’m still learning to cope with.

41 is, you see, a difficult birthday. You are no longer simply flirting with the exciting and novel concept of turning 40 but actually INTO YOUR FORTIES. You stop focusing on the body parts that are better than expected at this advanced age and start to realise that the slide can only be slowed with brutal exercise, surgical intervention, or both. This is also approximately when all those body-positive, age-embracing sayings you used to spout as a young, pert-breasted, wrinkle-free feminist like, “Shoot me if I ever get a boob job!” or “I’d NEVER have plastic surgery! We should all embrace ageing!” go rapidly out of the window.

Further, I was skint. Not an unusual occurrence in the grand scheme of things – the transition from carefree nomadism to a world of rent and school fees is a challenging one, even if you’re not feckless with a capital ‘F’ and cursed with a constitutional tendency to spend every invoice twice, once when you bill it and once when you get paid, like me – but being skint is something you’re supposed to grow out of, and I haven’t.

In fact, as Zac was in Australia enjoying some quality time with his dad, I was quite tempted to laugh the whole thing off, buy a bottle of something toxic and Indonesian, and spend the evening jabbing at clickbait, hating myself and sobbing quietly.

Then someone paid me. And, life looking unimaginably brighter, I rang the Bag Lady and asked if she was up for cocktails. (She’s five years older than me, though doesn’t look it, and I thought she’d be able to update me as to whether birthdays continued to be shite after 40, and whether this sort of feeling was normal for 41, which, according to her — spoiler alert! – they do, with 45 being a particular lowpoint, and, yes, it is, very.)

Bali does do wonderful sunsets, blazing streaks of sky, crashing waves, dark sand beaches so dazzling that the pools the water leaves behind sparkle like oil slicks, and this was an absolute corker.

Donning heels, shorts and tank tops (not an outfit I’d have envisaged myself wearing at 40, let alone – aarrrgggghhh! – 41 but fuck it) birthday “celebrations” commenced with sundowners at a much slicker beach bar than the usual. Bali does do wonderful sunsets, blazing streaks of sky, crashing waves, dark sand beaches so dazzling that the pools the water leaves behind sparkle like oil slicks, and this was an absolute corker.

The perfect counterpoint, in fact, to those usual 40-ish discussions, centring on which body parts are next to go, when the skin starts to go papery, and whether it really is all “ova” for the ovaries or if you could pop another one out in the next year if you really focused hard and found someone to do the honours.

Apparently, it’s the upper arms that really go next, unless you exercise like a demon, and knees. I remember when Demi Moore spent $250,000 on plastic surgery, much of it devoted to her knees, and I wondered what could possibly go wrong with a person’s knees that could require plastic surgery. And now I’m beginning to learn.

And, yes, I know that as a good feminist I shouldn’t give a monkeys about any of this, but, actually, I do. Maturity is, in my view, an over-rated virtue, I can’t find a single positive in the physical ageing process, and, while I suppose I’m against “body-shaming”, I think, in general, a 20-something size 10 body looks very much nicer than a 50-something size 18.

All of which to say is that The Bag Lady and I sit there like a pair of old witches discussing Botox, fillers and vampire facials until it’s time to head somewhere cheaper and more local while she’s notionally sober enough to drive (aka, since there’s no drink drive limit in Indonesia, can get around corners without putting the car in a ditch).


Somewhere local turns out to Old Man’s, whose happy hour is a Canggu institution, even if it does start at the ungodly hour of 5pm, and, what with it being the Easter mini-peak, it’s full of fresh flesh interesting new people, plus a bunch of knobs playing an insanely competitive game of beer pong.

The Bag Lady and I have similar “interaction” styles when out and about, which is to say that we both tend to accuse straight man who fancy us of being gay either because we don’t want to get off with them or because we do, or because we’ve drunk our bodyweight in cheap spirits and buggered our gaydar.

We’re also quite relaxed about hanging out with the youth. I mean, god, in my 20s I was hanging out with people in their 40s, so there’s nothing wrong with being on the other side of the equation now. In fact, now that I think about it, I remember being vaguely impressed by my friends in their 40s who hadn’t grown out of partying hard when I was in my 20s.

Plus – ooh! Hello! Wildly age-inappropriate and really remarkably good-looking man! Kid. Cherub. Whatever. Yay! Go me! Blimey! He’s up for it! Yikes!

And so, after a cursory squizz to establish that neither my son’s schoolfriends nor my son’s teachers are in the bar, my 41st birthday degenerates into sucking face on a dance floor, and thence to a nearby hotel room, with the Bag Lady, a cherub, his mate, whom the Bag Lady erroneously yet vocally insists is gay, and a bottle of Duty Free whisky. It’s splendidly messy – they get told off by the hotel for making too much noise – and highly entertaining.

Further, thanks to not being stuck in Lukla, I appear not to be going perimenopausally insane, which is always a plus.


Poolside at the Bag Lady’s at haggard o’clock the next morning, as I nurse a corking hangover and she nurses what turns out to be (oops!) both a hangover AND incipient dengue, we contemplate going round the corner for breakfast.

Breakfast is problematic, since her area is hipster central, which means her local caff is full of 20-year-olds with tight buns in bikinis, rather than haggard old bags with eyeliner smeared all over their faces looking twenty years older than they did the night before because, well, once you get to our advanced age smudged black eyeliner makes you look less like Edie Sedgwick and more like Baby Jane.

As I’ve remarked elsewhere, going from well-rested and made-up in low light to smeared makeup in full sunlight after limited sleep and your bodyweight in spirits can add twenty years (or more) to your age. Yep, a 40ish woman who looked 30-ish through beer goggles and good makeup can quite easily look 50-ish in the morning, while a 20ish chap will continue to look dewy, because that’s what they do. (Neither the Bag Lady or I are really sure what to do about this. Leave before dawn?! Pop into the bathroom with a vat of Touche Éclat and a trowel, then nip back to bed?!)

“Well,” I say, spritelily, emerging from the Bag Lady’s pool. “That was a turn-up for the books! I feel quite positive about myself again!”

“How old was he again? TWENTY?!” says the Bag Lady, who has spawn around that age.

“He was TWENTY-SEVEN,” I say. “That’s quite grown-up.”

“You’d have SHAGGED him if I hadn’t been there,” she says.

“And what’s wrong with THAT?!” I say.

Happy birthday to me!

19 Responses

  1. pam says:

    I turned a shocking 51 this year, and when I look in the mirror in the morning (or the bad light of my monitor when I’m on GChat), I’m surprised when I see age on my face. If I’m awake enough, I promptly slather on some moisturizer and say a Hail Mary for my move to grayer climes at 29. Age inappropriate boys don’t look so appealing to me as they once did, which honestly, is something of a relief, though that’s a fairly recent phenom; I’ve always admired good *aesthetics.* I’ve been broke for two years now, which just feels stupid, like, “Christ, haven’t you figured out economics at this advanced age?” but I don’t regret the circumstances that got me here. Aging is some bullshit, as all my friends on this side of the 40 divide will agree, and the need to actually exercise rather than eat all the cake and go for a bit of a wander on the beach is deeply annoying, but the big big big upside (in my case) has been a real apathy about what other people think about and my outspoken and contentious opinions and my hopelessly dated thrift store wardrobe. Not that I was bogged down in that before, much, but now, I’m totally willing to tell people I can’t be bothered with to fuck right off, and that’s a good time.

    Happy birthday. Sounds like yours was actually quite perfect.

    • Theodora says:

      I was heartened to catch up with a friend from London who is, horrifyingly, 60, recently (although she’s not white, so has an advantage over my leathery foreign skin) – and felt quite positive about it. Despite not having property and assets and all those sorts of things you’re supposed to have by age 60.

      For me, age inappropriate boys is a relatively recent phenomenon. I have a horrible feeling that I have always liked men in the age 25-45 year age range, and that that may not change as I advance in years, although, of course it may do.

      I hear ya on the not caring what others think, though. That’s an aspect of ageing that is genuinely wonderful, no longer giving a monkeys about all sorts of stuff. Thanks for the birthday wishes!

  2. Rachel says:

    God Theodora, you are priceless! At the advanced age of *whispers* 43, I can confirm that they get scarier, although my f##k it attitude is easily compensating!

    Happy, happy Birthday 😉

  3. Marilia says:

    A friend of mine said that ¨aging is a privilege, since the only other option is way worse¨. That helps me when I´m being vane bout getting older.

    I´m with you on liking men from from a range, mine is 25-40 and sticking to it 😉

    • Theodora says:

      Oh indeed. A blogger I followed closely – Lisa Bonchek Adams – died recently. She was 46, with three children. Ageing is indeed a privilege.

  4. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,

    Happy 41 years! I’m in Puerto Rico, with my dogs, Joko (you can read as Djoko) and Cleo. Our golden retriever, Dulce, is on Brazil with mommy. Of course, Dulce isn’t my dog. She’s mommy dog. Weh, Joko’s living and loving Puerto Rico. And me too. This’s my life, now. I love the sea breeze, the hot and humid tropical climate, the smell of salt air… All of it is remembering of my idyllic childhood at the beach. Joko’s relaxing at the sofa of our house, at the centre of San Juan. This’s my life, now. Now, I’m an inveterate traveller. I’m gipsy, I don’t have any definitive patria. The life look like the sea waves, unstable and serene, but calm and tranquil at the same time. This’s a poem I made today. And happy 41 years!

    Bye,

    Your Brazilian-Balinese-Puerto Rican buddy,

    Rosita

  5. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,

    Happy 41 years! Life’s always a party, you only need to appreciate the good moments, because they can be very fleeting. You only need to be happy with yourself and everything is good for you. This’s a poem who I made today. 😀 and I’ll ask something you…. What was the appearance of Winnie, the dog who you adopted for a short time in Bali? I know it was a sad history, but you appreciated some rare good moments you had with your puppy. And it’s very good! But I’m asking what was her appearance… She looked like an unique KBD (Kintamani Bali Dog) or a common street dog?

    • Theodora says:

      Ah, Winnie was just a mix – small and black, definitely not a Kintamani purebred. Thank you for the birthday wishes!

      • Rosita says:

        Oh, thanks, my dear! 😀 what’s your favorite dog breed? I like all dogs, but I prefer KBDs (Kintamani Bali Dog). And what’s your favorite? 🙂

  6. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,
    I like so much your posts! 🙂 you’re a great blogger, in my opinion. And I think you have a kind heart, because you tried to help a poor sick dog – Winnie. I think it occurred because had to occur. Nothing occur without any motive. I had a male KBD (Kintamani Bali Dog), Teman, but he scaped of our home 🙁 now, I’m with Djoko, another male KBD, who I bought to “substitute” Teman, but I discovered that a dog CANNOT substitutes another! And mommy have a female Golden Retriever, but I don’t like she so much. I think goldens can get sick easy, as most as purebred dogs 🙁 but KBDs are most healthy than some purebred dogs. Why?

  7. Rosita says:

    Hi, Thea,

    It’s me again. I’m so glad that you liked the congratulations messages who I wrote! I would like to be a writer, one day, maybe… 😉 and you’ll like my book, of course! 🙂 and it will be a book about my life with my dogs, because I LOVE dogs. My favorite dog breed is KBD (Kintamani Bali Dog). And what’s your favorite dog breed?

  8. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,

    Can you read it and give me your opinion, please?

    Love, Bark and Run (part 1):

    One Kintamani litter, barking and playing in a small house at the interior of this city. The choose, a white male, is picked by an old man, who’s putting the dog in a car. This little puppy is in a big car, who’s going to the capital. In the road, the puppy sees some cars, trucks, motorcycles, a rice field, a dense forest and some houses, but this bucolic view’s fleet substituted by skyscrapers, houses and more cars and motorcycles. The puppy’s fascinated by that all. Poor puppy. He doesn’t know how his life’ll change… The old man out the dog in a cage, at a pet shop. A 15 years old girl’s petting the white fur of the puppy and call him as “Jinny”. This tall and thin, suntanned girl with a beautiful brown longhair leave the puppy to a big apartment, but she know he’ll not stay in here too longer. This family have another plans – good plains, of course -, for Jinny. Some months after, the puppy isn’t a puppy anymore, but a beautiful white big dog, so, the family put a red collar in Jinny and leave him to a small, but cozy home, decorated at the typical Balinese style – an exotic style, because this story isn’t passing in Bali -, with some palm trees and a refreshing pool, because the climate of this city’s very hot and humid. Some years after, the girl’s entering in the university, so, she prefer stay with Jinny in the countryside home to stay in the apartment at a chaotic city. The countryside home’s less distant of her university than the apartment. Some years after, Jinny isn’t more the cute puppy he was a day, but an old and decrepit dog, and the girl, who isn’t more a little girl, but yes a great woman, formed in Tropical Medicine, decide to travel abroad, but, the question is: she’ll leave her old dog? Or she’s going to put him in an animal shelter? If you really love dogs and would like to know how this story will end, wait for the new chapter!

    What do you think about the story who I wrote? 🙂

  9. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora. I’m sending there the second part of the story who I made.

    Love, Bark and Run (part 2):

    Jinny isn’t more a cute Kintamani puppy who he was nine years after. Now, he’s an old and mangy dog, decrepit by the age and arthritis, but loved by his owner, who isn’t more a small girl with suntanned skin and a brown longhair, but yes a great woman, who’s working as a doctor, formed in Tropical Medicine and an inveterate traveller. The girl is needing to move to Panama, an emerging country in South America. But the question is: is she leaving her loyal dog, Jinny? Or she’ll put him down? She leaved him to Panama. Jinny was very anxious, because this was his first travel by plane. He only travelled by car or truck, when he was just a puppy. When they arrived in Panama, the girl went to her new home with the dog, who was happy like a puppy, wagging his tail and running in circles. The girl laughed a bit. So, they went to San Blas, a place in Panama who have so many beautiful islands, in the next day. But it wasn’t a holiday trip, but yes a life trip. The girl was working, living and loving in Panama. In the next month, the girl bring home with her new boyfriend, who she met at the work. Two years after, they married. The girl had two sons: a boy and a girl. They moved to a new home, distant of the capital. Three years after, Jinny suddenly become very ill. He wasn’t eating or drinking anything, and was drooling a lot. Jinny tried to bite violently his owners. The girl was desolated. Her husband too. Then, they leaved Jinny to the vet. In the road, Jinny scratched the leg of the woman. When they came to the vet clinic, the vet – a tanned and mild-age woman called them to the examination room.
    – Jinn, what’s wrong with you?, she said, crying. The dog licked her hand. Then, the vet talked to the girl that her beloved dog was with any neurological disease.
    – It can be anything, even rabies. We don’t know. We can make some exams now and treat him or you can leave him to home. What do you prefer?, the vet asked.
    Now, the girl remembered that her beloved Jinny wasn’t vaccinated against rabies.
    – Can you make him some exams, please?
    – Oh, ok. We’ll make him some exams.
    Some days after, the cel was ringing.
    – The results came today. Positive for rabies. We euthanized him, the vet said.
    So, the woman remembered that some persons talked her dog was attacked by a stray dog one week after he got sick.
    – Oh, my God! How I would talk it to the children? And I NEED urgently the rabies vaccine. Jinn scratched me at the road to the clinic!, the woman said, crying. Her husband tried to calm her down. They went to the hospital and the woman got her rabies shots. One simpatic doctor asked how her dog got infected.
    – I really don’t remember. It could be when a stray dog attacked my beloved Jinn-, she said, crying.
    Then, the time passed, the woman received all rabies shots, she only have her memories of an idyllic adolescence in Surabaya, with the best dog of the world, in her mind, as well, and, four years after, she received a puppy. good friend. But it wasn’t a Kintamani puppy like Jinny, but yes a stray puppy who was rescued from the animal shelter. This cute puppy was brownish, with erect ears, black eyes, and wasn’t stopping of wag his tail. Of course, a very playful puppy.
    – Oh, it’s an adorable gift. The children would like of this puppy-, the woman said. Then, she leaved the puppy to be vaccinated against rabies, and leaved him to home. The children hugged and played with him. They give him a name: Fred. An adorable name for a lovable puppy.
    The woman learned with Jinny that dogs LOVE his owners, BARK for another dogs and RUN when they’re happy. And is she going to learn anything with Freddy?
    END

    what do you think about this story who I made? It’s the continuation of the first part of Love, Bark and Run, a FICTIONAL story who I made. Any similarity with true characters or places will be nothing than mere COINCIDENCE.

    What do you think about this story who I made? 😉

    Bye for today,
    Your Brazilian buddy,
    Rosita

    • Theodora says:

      Hi Rosita! Thank you very much for sharing your story with me. I think it’s an interesting story with a lot of potential, but I’d recommend you work on writing in your native language first, where it’s easier to be creative: it’s hard to write good fiction even in your home language, so writing in English adds another level of difficulty. Theodora

  10. Rosita says:

    Oh, thanks, my dear! I’ll make this.

  11. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,
    I’ll make this who you suggested me. I’ll write a story on my home language, who’s Portuguese. But I’m with a doubt: you understand a text written in Portuguese?
    Bye for today,
    Rosita

    • Theodora says:

      Hi Rosita, No, I don’t really speak Portuguese, I’m afraid, but if you’re looking to develop yourself as a writer, I think it’s best you write in that. Foreign readers like me can always put it in Google translate…. Theodora

  12. Rosita says:

    Hi, Theodora,
    Oh, ok. I’ll make this. ❤️namaste and bye for today
    Your Brazilian buddy,
    Rosita