FORTY is the mid-point in the new life expectancy of four-score-years.
The old biblical three-score-years-and-ten, 70, has been extended by a decade — or perhaps two by the time my generation makes it to old age.
Yet anyone who reaches their 40th milestone, as I do today, has in a way travelled further than midway.
Even those of us who will be fortunate enough to reach a great old age will probably experience the latter half much faster than the first, given the startling way that time seems to keep speeding up.
So seniority suddenly seems close, yet at the same time leaving school does not seem long ago.
Grappling with your new understanding of time, and the tricks it plays, is one of the strangest things about entering this middle phase of life (note how I can’t bring myself to write “passing” the middle phase of life, which is surely more accurate).
Now I understand that sign on a tower in Ballygowan which says ‘The Time Is Short’.
I remember having it pointed out to me as a boy and thinking: but there is so much time.
Old age seemed as far in the distance as 500 years does now.
Then there is something about turning 40 which is not so much strange as stark. It is the unsexiness of the age.
Even the sound of the word forty is flabby.
You cannot, unless you are obtuse, or perhaps a 40-year-old billionaire or Hollywood actor, reach this point in life and remain unaware that there are few 20-somethings who fancy 40-somethings.
And at 40 your memory, although not as sharp as it was, remains fresh of the younger person’s perception of the age of 40.
It was the very essence of uncool: an age, mercifully far off in the future, associated with your parents.
There is also the uncomfortable business, at 40, of seeing what other people have already achieved. This is a list that proliferates by the day.
I am far past the stage of thinking that policemen look young. I have seen judges who seem far too fresh.
Why, even prime ministers look too young.
The country is run by annoyingly successful young men. Our most senior politicians, Nick Clegg, David Cameron, George Osborne, Danny Alexander and Ed Milliband are all aged 39 to 45.
But I contradict myself. I call them “young” men – isn’t my point that 40s isn’t young?
Sportsmen and women are on the scrapheap at 40, and may have been for over a decade.
And what about rock stars? Plenty still make the grade in their 40s and beyond, but come with the dreaded adjective ‘ageing’.
This explains why I was cheering on Darren Clarke’s Open victory until I was hoarse, despite being on the far side of the Atlantic. It wasn’t because he is a great chap or any of that. But because he is 42!
My favourite public figures are the Ken Clarkes and Alex Fergusons who are still operating at the highest levels in their 70s.
And I am wishing the Duke of Edinburgh a speedy recovery, given how he handles being in his tenth — yes tenth — decade.
I could go on: one of the most inspirational women I have interviewed was the late Elizabeth Yensen from Holywood, Co Down, on her 109th and 110th birthdays.
These people put 40 in perspective.
There are other compensations, such as being able to play out the old-timer routine.
You begin to be able to refer credibly and casually to significant things that you did 25 years ago, and things that you remember 35 years ago, as if this confers on you the status of all-round wise man.
This is akin to name dropping.
“Oh I remember such-and-such happening in 1975” (subtext to younger folk born 20 or 30 years after the said date: “you don’t know the half of it”).
Even though I feel a touch of gloom about reaching this point in life quite so quickly, I am hopeful.
I dreaded my 30s but enjoyed them more than my 20s. I wasn’t thrilled about leaving my teens either, but ended up enjoying my 20s more.
So I am determined that life for me really is going to begin at 40.
And I’m old enough to know that I’ll need to seize it.
Nick Garbutt returns in the New Year