Watch out, many of the baby boomers’ final cohort will be turning 60 this year – those born in the satisfyingly neat year of 1960 (it is so easy to work out how old one is, when there’s a zero at the end).

So expect a deluge of articles on the subject – how entering the seventh decade is a liberating experience, that 60 is the new 40, that age is just a number (well, yes, but it does mark some passage of time) and that the best is yet to come.

But let that big birthday come at its own pace. Exciting though it is to become a sexagenarian, don’t rush towards it. I am one of those baby boomers, and I find I am already thinking of myself as being 60 even though I’ve another six months to go. That’s the problem with an approaching landmark-birthday, it’s like watching a giant planet from a small moon: it fills one’s horizons.

The decade of my fifties has been good to me and I don’t want to be rude by dashing off without saying a proper goodbye. I want to enjoy a full twelve months between one set of candles and the next.

So, my sixtieth birthday can wait its turn. No sneaking a few months from my fifties. When it comes I will embrace it with gusto but I do not expect to see any changes in what I do or how I do it. My only question is this: while I am being so determinedly 59 who will actually plan my birthday celebrations?

Seriously, it’s only six months away.

Categories: Strays

Tags: Humour, Turning 60