Being a mid-aged woman is a bit like being a nerd of the classroom – you do all the work, know you are smart, but no-one really takes you seriously.

Recently I’ve been coming round to the fact that as a single woman again, I am actually able to look at men and think about flirting with them.   This is a very strange concept after being married for so long.  Not bad strange has to be said, catatonically scary but good strange.

The worrying thing is that I eye up a lovely young man and then remember with a shock that I am in fact a 46-year old women with 3 small children, and the image I had of running to the nearest hotel skids to a noisy halt when I realise that I’m carrying 3 M&S bags full of wine and woolly tights, and am late for the school pick up.  So the young man that I eye up (because he was what I was eyeing up when I was last single) would most probably not be eyeing me up.  At least not while I’m holding a bag of woolly tights.

So right now I’m a little pissed off with ‘youth’.   And VERY pissed off with middle age.   Why do all the cliches have to be right?  (I guess this is what makes them a cliche…how I yearn for the loneliness of uniqueness).

As ‘youth’ we hear about the madly menopausal medley of issues that befall our already sagging shoulders once the candles have been blown out on our fortieth birthdays, the hangover beginning before we even finish drinking.

Our eyesight will diminish, our chin hairs will multiply. It’s harder to lose weight and even harder to stay the same weight.  Why should youth get the ‘get out of jail free’ card on drinking and eating what we want? 

It’s bloody NOW we need to be able to sink a bottle of wine after a long day looking after multiple people and multiple projects and not risk being so grimly groggy the next day we look our age and feel ten years older. 

It’s bloody NOW we need to be able to consume our body weight in chocolate and relax on the sofa instead of having to do pilates to keep our organs vaguely in place. As a teenager and 20 something I wasted hours of my life eating crap and watching crap and spending whole Saturday’s on the sofa.  But I should have been active and agile and healthy, so that NOW I can lie on a sofa and watch back to back Poldark and eat Doritos and wine for dinner.

But chatting with a pal recently, she asked me would I go back and do it all again? Would I go back to the before single (rather than the current singe), and I pondered over my Pinot and thought, actually, no.   I would only go back to that body and booty with my current brains and balls.   I love the fact that self-consciousness went out with candles on one of those 40’s birthday, and sense and sass came in with the reading glasses.  I might have to do more planks than parties, but I wouldn’t swap it for youth or money.   I’m also sticking with the Doritos and wine. 

My eyesight might be blurred but my wits are sharp.   The nerds always come away from the end of the movie smiling.