Tiffanie Darke - Now We Are 40

HarperCollins Publishers

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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

FIRST EDITION

© Tiffanie Darke 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover illustration © Noma Bar

Tiffanie Darke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008185329

Ebook edition: February 2017 ISBN: 9780008185343

Version: 2017-02-07

The carapace of coolness is too much for Claire, also. She breaks the silence by saying that it’s not healthy to live life as a succession of isolated little cool moments. ‘Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them.’

Douglas Coupland, Generation X

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Going Up, Going Down

Introduction: Don’t Grow Up – It’s a Trick

1 I Was Eight in the Eighties

2 Four Go to Ibiza

3 Just Be Good to Me: How Business Became Sexy

4 When Noel Gallagher Went to Number 10

5 Clinton’s Cigar

6 Let’s Get Digital

7 Three Lions

8 Sex: The Consequences

9 Meet You in the Gastropub

10 Never Complain, Never Explain

11 Namaste

12 Alexander Is Dead, Long Live McQueen

13 Flat White

14 Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels

15 Is It My Go on the iPad Now?

16 Amy Winehouse, RIP

17 Going Green, Finally

18 Will House Prices Ever Stop Going Up?

19 The Speed of Things

20 Where We Are Headed

Appendix

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

When I edited the Sunday Times Style magazine, the ‘Going Up, Going Down’ column became something of a cult read. Readers furiously measured themselves against it: were they still wearing one of the trends we would cruelly consign to ‘Going Down’? Were they already ordering the cocktail that we would crown in ‘Going Up’? A shortcut to everything that is in and out of favour, like the best journalism the column was born of instinct, wit and inside knowledge. Or just how ravaging our hangovers were on a Thursday morning.

This is my version of what it’s like being in your forties.

UP

Boden

Strangely good these days

Zoopla and Rightmove

Better than sex

Food

OBSESSED. When your buckwheat risotto says more about you than your vintage Prada

Witness the fitness

The Iron Man entry form is the new trophy wife; sleeveless dresses the status symbol of acceptable upper-arm tone

Paaarty!

The skills are honed

Our kids

A confetti canon of love on permanent explosion

Home economics

What you used to spend on shoes, you now spend on mid-century modern furniture

Wise, but not smug

Yep – we know stuff now. But we still want to know more

Cool

Still like it. Love it actually

DOWN

Hangovers

Crucifying. And getting worse

Luxury labels

So new money. Unless it’s Gucci. Or Balenciaga. Do keep up

Having it all

Overrated

Smartphones

Remember that time when we used to go places with people and do things? Walk along the street without bumping into people? No, me neither

Botox denial

Don’t get left behind, pruneface

God

Who?

Parenting

Torturous, difficult, exhausting, boring, life-limiting, endless

Money

Suddenly, irritatingly, an issue

Weight

Hmm. Getting a little harder to shift …

Music

Rubbish now. How are you meant to find anything good in this sea of overchoice? No, I do not want another fricking app

Time

Just gone

Introduction

In the summer of 1991 I was waitressing at Pizza Hut on Bournemouth High Street. It was before I went up to university, and I was living at home, saving everything I could to go backpacking around some third world country. In the background R.E.M.’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ was playing, as was the KLF’s ‘Last Train to Trancentral’. The Soviet Union was breaking up, Operation Desert Storm had come to an end, and Sega had released Sonic the Hedgehog . Tim Berners-Lee announced the World Wide Web project, but not many people noticed. It was also raining rather a lot.

Those waitressing wages were not great, nor were the tips, but they were enough to fund an adventure around India, where my money would go far and my experiences would be all my own. Well, mine and all the other thousands of backpackers shacked up beside me in the Lonely Planet hostels. Once there, I would live in tie-dye trousers, wonder at the extraordinary cacophony of religions, dance at full moon parties, drink a lot of chai latte and inevitably buy some dodgy drapes.

That summer I was also reading Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X . Only recently published, it was already something of a hit. In the book, Coupland portrayed our generation as a listless, directionless, cynical bunch of slackers who drifted from one McJob to the next in search of a thrill. It perfectly encapsulated my life at the time, as I saw no inconsistency between serving the Four Cheese pizza to a bunch of post-pub Bournemouth lads and studying Ancient Greek at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. That was me, that was us.

So what has happened to Generation X? Have we been forgotten? If you check your emails and Facebook feeds, your Google alerts and hashtags, you will see that most conversation now is about this group of people called Millennials. Millennials, we are reminded constantly, work hard, are annoyingly entitled, love an artisanal coffee and a skinny jean, and are changing the culture, reshaping society and rewriting the rule book of living.

Or everyone goes on about Boomers. How they’ve got all the money and all the houses and really are only just getting started, because everyone lives for hundreds of years now, and their big, fat final-salary pensions mean they have decades of Saga holidays ahead. Not cruises – no one goes on cruises any more, that’s so Pensioners from the Last Century. Boomers go wolf trekking in Eritrea and swipe right on silver Tinder. Pass the Châteauneuf, old girl!