My post-50 joy

The morning I turned 50, some years ago now, a strange thing happened. I’d anticipated some neurotic spasm or other to visit me at the turn of this decade, as it had at 40. Back then, I’d fixated on my paltry novelist’s income as evidence of some failure to mature. I’d compared my circumstances to those of much wealthier friends, conveniently overlooking all the others I knew who lived tranquil, meaningful lives on even less money than we had. But once I realised that my fuss over what my bank balance ‘should’ have looked like ‘by now’ was actually just a commonplace bout of status anxiety on turning 40, I more or less snapped out of it and got on with life.

Still, 50 was different, wasn’t