Damien Owens: author talks about hitting 50 - and all the milestones that go with it
Damien Owens: big fan of new bands like Nirvana and the Stone Roses
Author Damien Owens wrote his new novel, , after turning 50. The book is about Eugene – who is just 70, and his son, Jim – who is 40. Both are bachelors, and Eugene is worried that Jim is turning 40 and really has nothing to show for it – he still lives at home, has never had a girlfriend, and doesn’t really go out.
Both are hitting an age milestone in their lives, and ultimately are re-learning a lot about themselves - and the realisation that ‘age’ and ‘getting older’ weren't really the issues all this time.
Here, Damien reflects on his own age milestone...
When my friends and I turned thirty, there was a lot of jovial fake sadness. ‘It’s all over now,’ we sighed. ‘Bloody thirty! Might as well be dead.’
We could indulge ourselves like that because we knew fine well that nothing was over. Thirty was just twenty with more money and sense. It was fun to pretend you had one foot in the grave when really you still had both feet in the pub. Time passed, as it will, and we all turned forty.
‘Life begins!’ we chuckled nervously, and we sort of meant it. What was beginning, really, was a new form of settled existence in which we no longer had to fake it.
A thirty-something can convince themselves that they’re keeping up with the kids. A forty year-old abandons any such pretence and is frankly relieved to do so. They can finally admit that they hated nightclubs all along and that these days nothing thrills them so much as the last-minute cancellation of plans.
There are no jokes about getting old because, God help us, we really are getting old. There’s no smug relief about settling down because we’ve settled so profoundly, we can’t move our legs. We just stare at each other in stupefied horror. ‘H-happy birthday,’ we say, our voices cracking.
When you turn fifty, your first reaction is disbelief. ‘I can’t be fifty,’ I told myself. ‘Fifty-year-olds are clueless old codgers. But I like all the latest bands, like Nirvana and The Stone Roses. I’ve seen that new show everyone’s talking about, what’s it called, . I play video games, for God’s sake, so long as they don’t require quick reactions. Fifty? No. There’s been a mistake.’
The disbelief is soon replaced by panic, much of it centred on the issue of health. You start to notice how many ad campaigns are aimed at you and your contemporaries. ‘Over fifty?’ some kindly face asks, before explaining how you probably won’t be able to walk for much longer and should send off for this vitamin supplement while you can still go get your phone. In your forties, you joked about groaning when you got out of a deep chair.
‘I can’t even stand up without going ughhh,’ you’d say. All your forty-something friends would laugh along. It was a novelty. You give it some thought now and realise that you don’t just groan getting out of a chair. You groan picking up a fork. It’s not new anymore and it’s sure as hell not funny. You start wondering what people would say if you tripped and did yourself a mischief. Oh God – would they say you’d ‘had a fall’?
Then one day you wake up and find that your eyes have turned into unreasonable toddlers. ‘I CAN’T READ THAT,’ they shriek. ‘IT’S TOO FAR AWAY. I CAN’T READ THAT EITHER. IT’S TOO CLOSE.’ You wind up getting ruinously expensive glasses that are designed to deal with eight separate viewing scenarios.
It’s either that or deal with eight different pairs, which leads to this: ‘Have you seen my glasses? Not those, they’re my reading glasses. Not those, they’re my TV glasses. Not those, they’re my driving glasses.’ Doctors, you notice, no longer treat your complaints as little mysteries that they need to get to the bottom of. What seems like a crisis to you is perfectly simple to them: you’re in your fifties. Of course various bits of you have started to seize up or wear away or fall off. It doesn’t matter what symptoms you present with.
You could show up with an arrow through your neck and they’d say, ‘Well, at your age, these things start to happen, I’m afraid.’ But it’s not all about health.
You remember the headliners you were so desperate to see in 1992 and find they’re playing at two o’clock on the Sunday afternoon on something called The Golden Oldies stage. Or at least, one of them is. Three of the original members are dead.
Then, perhaps worst of all, it dawns on you that you can no longer impress anyone by achievement relative to age. A twenty-two-year-old who runs a successful company can expect astonished plaudits from every angle. An eighty-year-old who runs their first marathon is a source of inspiration to all. But your fifties are a no-man’s land. You’re simultaneously too old and too young for that thing you did to be an inspiration to anybody.
You could become CEO of a multinational conglomerate, you could become Taoiseach, you could become Secretary General of the UN, and no one would say, ‘Wow, only fifty-five? Fair play.’ If you’re a creative person of some kind, a writer, a musician, an actor, the achievement pain is particularly acute. ‘Why the hell,’ you complain from the depths of your new cardigan, which doesn’t look great, admittedly, but is very cosy, ‘are all these articles about the Hot New Things, the debut novels, the debut albums, the debut performances? What about those of us who have been around the block and taken all the blows but are still putting ourselves out there?’
Then someone pops up to point out that you didn’t seem to mind when you were the debutant. You try to throw something at them, but it’s too heavy so you give up and decide to have a nap instead, having recently discovered that there’s no shame in resting your eyes for twenty minutes in the afternoon.
‘Shut up,’ you mumble, already drifting off.
- Duffy and Son is published by Gill
