The bell tolls 35

I certainly felt my years in the pool today, as I was overtaken by sprightly pensioners. Last week two of them were discussing whether 5 swims and '70-80 miles' running per week was a bit too much. This while I was delirious from 60 lengths…

Weirdly, I don't feel 35 as long as I avoid looking down. It seems only yesterday that I was leaving university (for the first time), in 1996, looking forward to that night-shift data-entry job in Stoke. What have I done since then? Basically, a lot of reading. I'm not even in Opposition, let alone running a network of labour camps for people with hairstyles, Tory voting records, clothes which simply advertise the brand, BMX bikes, Jeremy Clarkson videos or goatees. Time's winged chariot and all that…

At this rate, my reign of terror will never take place.

Time for a new tie

Philip Larkin had this to say about ageing, which may not resonate now that everyone other than the Queen and the Pope all wear t-shirts to work:

…there's no difference between 25 and 26, it's just like wearing a different tie; but once past 35 it's impossible not to feel that each year is taking one further from what is desired and pleasant and nearer to what is loathed and dreaded UNLESS… you have wound yourself thoroughly into life by conceiving and gratifying a chain of desires.

(Letter to Maeve Brennan, 1961).

and to Judy Egerton:

The sense of approaching forty is strong upon me, and [of] having completely wasted the time of twenty to forty, when power should be greatest and relish keenest. Anything I do now will be a compromise with second or third best. I suddenly see myself as a freak and a failure, and my way of life as a farce. 

(Letter to Judy Egerton, May 1961)

Larkin's score by 35: two novels, two volumes of poetry, regular media work, oversaw the building of Hull University Library, one of the best in the country.

I'm indifferent to a change of digit, but tomorrow I reach 35.