Ageing - do you embrace it or lie through your teeth?

Apparently my life is just beginning... or it's all downhill from here depending on who you speak to.
Aasma DayAasma Day
Aasma Day

I’ve reached the milestone birthday of 40 and rather than sobbing into my drink while rubbing wrinkle cream into my face or peering myopically into the mirror to pluck grey hairs from my head, I feel decidedly perky.

That might have something to do with the fact my birthday celebrations coincide with a holiday and I’ve had it on good authority that if you’re not in the country, the age increase doesn’t technically count.

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But in reality, age as a number honestly doesn’t bother me and in my head I still feel the same as I did when I was 20.

That is until I’m surrounded by other 20-year-olds and then on occasions I think: “Nah, I’m too old for this!”

However, I’ve never felt the need to hide or lie about my age. There’s absolutely no point as you still know exactly how old you are.

Unless you’re Doris Day, of course, who recently discovered she’s actually two years older than she thought.

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It seems Doris – who shares the same surname as me resulting in one of my bosses nicknaming me Doris – thought she was celebrating her 93rd birthday but her birth certificate revealed she was actually two years older.

Methinks Doris may have knocked a couple of years off her age at some point and told the white lie so often, she forgot her true age.

The only slight dismay I felt at turning 40 was when someone pointed out that when filling in one of those forms asking you to tick your age band, I now fall into the 40 to 59 category rather than 25 to 39. Ouch!

Turning 40 is a good time to take stock of your life, look at what you’ve achieved and think about where you want to go in the future.

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I’m definitely happy with my lot in life. I’ve always had to work incredibly hard but that makes any achievements more satisfying. And although I’ll never be rich, I’ve certainly struck gold in my personal life with Hubby and our twins.

There are still things I want to do, but I am filled with motivation to attempt them and am all for embracing change and fresh challenges.

There are downsides to getting older – hair either starts thinning or sprouting in places you don’t want while your midriff gets larger and your capacity for patience shrinks.

When you venture on a night out, you crave somewhere you can sit down and the music isn’t blaring so loud you have to be a pro at lip reading.

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Late nights are something you can do once in a while but any more than that and you’re secretly longing to go home and stick on your pyjamas.

However on the whole, I can usually out-party those a lot younger than me.

I still feel like I’m not a proper grown up and the fact I have two 11-year-olds never ceases to amaze me.

As a child, I thought 30 sounded ancient so 40 must have seemed prehistoric then.

But now I’ve got here, the view from the hill is not so bad.

The good thing about going downhill is you usually begin to pick up speed.