Helen Walne’s Human League

Forty. It’s a nice number for some. There are those 40 virgins, that 40-year-old virgin and 40 grand a month.

There are 40 red-hot tracks for summer, 40 fortifying vitamins, 40 tots of whisky and 40km to go.

There are 40 kinds of cheeses, 40kg lost and 40 days in the Bahamas on a 40-foot yacht.

I hate 40.

I hate its neatness and roundedness, the way it could be a stamp.

Compared with the ragged curl of 39, which is wondrously long-winded to pronounce, 40 is a strike with an auctioneer’s gavel, a no-nonsense bang. Gone!

To the woman with the forehead lines stooped at the back.

I remember my father’s 40th birthday party.

He drank a lot of beer and danced to Fleetwood Mac.

The next day we were told to tiptoe around the house.

My father ate eggs on toast.

His eyes were the colour of embryo spots.

Women’s magazines like to tell us that 40 is the new 30. If that were the case, I’d be backpacking around Thailand with an unwashed djembe player called Josh, eating toadstools that do funny things to my head.

I’d still believe that drinking out of a shoe makes beer taste better and that cheese and mayonnaise microwaved on bread constitutes a balanced meal.

I still have a month before I turn 40.

Last year, it didn’t bother me. “Naah,” I said to B when he asked how I felt about it.

“You’re as young as you feel. Right now, I’m 16 with a slight dependence on cheap white wine.”

But now that I’m in the year I’m going to be turning that number-we-won’t-mention-from-here-on, I suddenly feel panicky.

The gap between me and old people has suddenly shrunk.

“David Cameron’s only five years older than me,” I murmured to B last week.

“He looks like my Dad. And he’s a prime minister.”

Other old people have started permeating my dreams: Madonna (13 years older than me and able to do the splits); JK Rowling (six years older than me and worth £560 million or R6 038m); my mother’s 95-year-old friend, who can drink more red wine at lunch than a gaucho.

And then comes the mid-life crisis. Bang. Thump thump. Sold to the old woman still wearing high-tops at the back.

It’s not the physical side of ageing that gnaws at me. I’ve had a forehead like a guitar fret board since I was 12.

It’s the tallying and the measuring; the threat of regret.

“Look back not with anxiety or ego,” say the self-help books, “but with gratitude and pride.”

Then they go and lose me by rambling on about angels and vision boards that comprise at least one picture of Oprah.

With my birthday looming, I’ve started taking nervous peeks back.

It’s like being pursued by a robber wearing a Debora Patta mask.

Things I am proud of: making banana bread; learning to drive in low range; beating Fernanda Ropa in the 100m; not falling in the pool on my wedding day; carrying a big rock; driving to the Bellville exhaust shop without a map; remembering that olives taste rubbish straight off the tree.

So far, so meaningless.

That leaves about 559 things I should have achieved by now.

People – and Yoda – will say that age matters not.

They’re lying (and can’t talk properly).

How do I know this? Because of the dearth of 60-year-olds with mohawks on Long Street and the absence of 16 year olds at the local bowls club.

No matter what Charlie Sheen believes, society demands that we act our age. And therein lurks a dilemma.

I have never been that age-we-won’t-mention, so am not sure what is required of me.

Do I pack away my Star Wars T-shirts and replace them with blouses?

Must I start listening to James Blunt (please don’t make me, please don’t make me)?

Should I add psyllium husks to my muesli and water to my glass of wine?

Do I buy a leaf blower?

I have a month in which to grow up.

I might get life insurance and stop biting my nails.

Perhaps I’ll finally learn how to write a cheque.

But today I’m still 39. I will brush the leaves in the driveway with gusto, eat 15 rusks for lunch, drink full-strength wine, and mosh to a Serbian punk band.

Then, because I am nearly old and will probably be exhausted, I might shuffle off to the bedroom and have 40 winks.

[email protected]; Twitter: @walnehelen