All I can say is that you won't change but the things around you seem to and you learn to adapt!

Age can play some very cruel tricks, but they can start at any age. Being 40 won't make much difference.

Good luck to you.

and it was just like any other day. I've had excess nasal hair since I was 15, so that particular delight of ageing wasn't new to me. I do have one very long silver eyebrow hair now, but I'm quite fond of it.

I like being older... it's like my body is catching up with my long-standing grumpy old bastard personality.

then you'll start with the "Eeee, when I were a lad..." talk.

S'alright.
Feel easier about myself than I ever did in my 30s.
And things began to look up professionally / creatively around my birthday.
I'm OK with my decay.

52 now, or is it 53? anyway everything is fine in yer napper it's just you can't be ersed with much anymore and that small shining bit you noticed through your flowing locks won the battle, knees hurt and a wizz in the middle of the night is required. Modern music is rubbish, telly makes you weep but ye love yer technology and wonder how you ever got by without an iPod Touch and all that internets malarky.
Hell you may even stumble upon a place where everyone has the same condition as you.

chin up old bean, it's allas darkest afore the dawn

much to my surprise, and I'm bemused to learn, my delight. Because getting older isn't so bad after all, and it's better than the alternative. In all honesty, I was more angst-ridden at 30 than I ever was at 40, or indeed my on 50th (although the latter may have been sweetened by a surprise break in Venice, organised in total hush hush by Mrs itfc1959, may god bless her).

So don't worry about it. Really.

"I still only feel around 24. (Just like everyone else, apparently.)"

I know more or less exactly how you feel, though for me it's twenty-three.

You're all going to be discussing what it was like to reach sixty. Please, for my sake, try and remember what it was like to be twenty years younger so I can ask for advice too.

I feel absolutely no different. In fact I feel as socially awkward and weird as I did at 17, now I've just got more self-knowledge to feel even worse about it.

Not really, but I do still feel like my younger self in most important ways, just with added experience. And less hair.

will remain young. And beautiful enough to make your heart weep. You, however, may feel increasingly like an anthropologist, marveling at a remarkable but quite separate species. Or a tourist denied entry to a land of milk and honey.

End of teenage years and all that. Forty? Pah! Who wants all that teenage/twentysomething angst again?

Like Aaliyah said,"age ain't nothin but a number". I sailed through my 40th, had a great party with friends, nieces, nephews, marvellous wife, daughters, tribal elders and extended family. I'm nearer 50 now, I still listen to the Ramones like I did when I was 15, and lots of other music too.

There may come a day when what I want for my birthday is "Jeremy Clarkson's Best of Dadrock Vol 2" but in the meantime I'll keep on keeping on - in my head I'm probably 19.

I tend to fall asleep on the sofa a lot more than I used to. I`d have a laugh at my old man for dozing off during Murder She Wrote and now I am doing the same ( although not to Angela Lansbury )

plus the obligatory aaggh or uurgh noises when sitting down, standing up, bending or lifting. They just suddenly start without warning along with puffing out of cheeks at the slightest physical activity.

1. More people in the pub than when I was 39. Possibly because the band were better, mind you.
2. Received comedy "I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years experience" T-shirt.
3. Woke up to find a grey chest hair (since removed - onset of male vanity?).
4. Slightly more forehead got sunburnt in recent sunny weather.
5. Everything else still much the same on "the other side".

Not unduly bothered. My interests and enthusiasms are much the same as they were when I was 21.

I still feel 21 but a little more assured and, I suppose, experienced. Which isn't a bad way to feel.

Just recently become aware that I am finally starting to look my age. For some time most thought I looked a good 7 or 8 years younger than I was. I don't think that's the case much now. I think I look like a bloke in my mid-40's. But what else can you reasonably expect?

I enjoy relaxation more and more. Simpler things are starting to please me a lot. A decent glass of red. A nice bit of cake. Fresh tasty bread. Contemplation. And being able to look back a long way and remember a good few happy times. All the interesting (to me) things I sorted my lazy arse into doing. Sharing houses and making some deep and true friends. Those trips to America, Russia and Australia. Getting married. The arrival of the little one. I, and most of us, have a lot of positive to look back on at this age. Or I certainly hope thats the case.

I do fart a lot more now though. Nobody smoke! Incoming!

3 years ago I have:
Started wearing glasses to read
Developed a steadily growing thinning patch in my hair
Been happier than I have ever been in my life

I enjoyed my 30s more than my 20s, was never comfortable in my teens, and hated being a child, and so far life in the middle of middle age is a blast. Your experience may vary, especially if you already think you hit your peak earlier, but from my point of view the best may be yet to come.

...celebrated on my own as wife decided to move out a month prior. I should feel like vistas of opportunity are opening up, but in truth I just seem to be too damn tired all the time.

Still, I have developed strange desires to grow vegetables, and have noticed a silver hair gracing my left areola - it is somewhat longer than its immediate neighbours, though some of its distant cousins, resident on my ears seem to be catching it.

Other than that, no real changes.

.. and was reluctantly beaten into a proper 'birthday festival' - treated to dinner at allegedly the 38th best restaurant in the world, a big blokey boy's lunch and a weekend in wine country with no end of foolishness. It was good to mark it, but then move on. It's all good. Less angst. More perspective, and more joy in the simple things as above. Happy birthday!

I'm 48 now and I love it! I think some of this is down to being what my ex-wife described as 'a perpetual student in my head'. I listen to music and go to gigs with the same gusto I did whilst at university - some of the same bands too - step forward Buzzcocks, Magazine, Bunnymen etc but also newer stuff - Duke and the King, Dawn Chorus, Hold Steady, Gaslight Anthem, Dan Auerbach etc etc.

I think the best bit, musically, is not feeling that you have to like the latest thing (we've all been guilty!) and some of the stuff I instinctively hated as a young punk I can appreciate and enjoy now (step forward many pre- 1976 artists, even ... Pink Floyd).

I'm happier than ever with my partner of the past seven years, I appreciate good real ale, decent red wine, enjoy cooking fine food and I read as many books as ever, if not more.

The only downside is I'll probably have to work for another 25 years to fund my lifestyle of choice!

Embrace old age - it's the future.

and went to see Doves. It was full of bloody middle aged men!

Celebrating tomorrow with some miaow and Worthys originals at an acid house party. In a CAMRA award winning pub.

And whilst I'm on the subject, Doves, get a bloody frontman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great music but if you're going to bother playing live at least get some personality.

S'alright. Like 25, but with money.

I think. Or am I 44? Hang on..

Yes I am. 44 in October. Anyway.

I'm as fit and as strong as I ever have been, although that does take increasing gym time to maintain. I enjoy life more than I ever have done.

What I do like is the ability to sit and think. I never used to be able to do this. You sit and debate inwardly.

I believe that it is called wisdom. I don't think that I could yet be considered wise. Maybe one day I will be.

I hope that the people who run this country are wise.

Unfortunately, the two men most likely to do so are my age.

I do not see this as a good thing.

because what I've done throughout my life is this:
I'm 25:"It's cool, I've got loads of time"
I'm 30:"Don't worry, loads of time"
I'm 35:"It's ok, plenty of time"
I have just turned 39:"Shit, hang on, there actually isn't loads of time anymore."

And the question still remains:
Time for what?

All the things that used to bother me when I was younger I now realise weren't worth getting worked up about.I can now let loose my inner eccentric and not give a f*ck what anyone thinks.I've come to realise that their is very little in life worth getting into a lather about.Sh*t happens all one can do is choose how to react to it.
Ageing is one of those things,just say Sod it and carry on.
A very happy birthday to you all and many of them.

I had a vasectomy on my 40th. Still, my birthday is in mid January so what else is there to do when everyone is skint after Xmas?

There are worst things to be than 40....53 for instance. lol. Age is immaterail. There's nothing you can do to stop it. (well, there is but lest not go there). The worst thing is having to shave places that hair shouldn't be allowed to grow.

But the great joy of getting older for me has been watching my children grow up and making a life for themselves.

Have a great birthday.

Quite looking forward to it - gives me a sort of justification for being grumpy, curmudgeonly and forgetful.

I'm 49 is my favourite moment on I Trawl the Megahertz. Me, I'm 45 and I'll see 46 by month-end. One thing that comes to mind is how short some lives now seem. The Hendrix/Parsons/Cobain deaths at age 27 now seem obscene - just kids, really, and the idea of what they might have accomplished, or simply enjoyed in their lives, far overshadows any ridiculous romanticism. Even Lennon's death now seems even more brutal.

For me, the forties have brought two lovely children, a restart button for life if there ever was one. I realise I've fully missed any opportunity to be a prodigy at anything, but - enjoying it while I can - I'm still the youngest person in my office. Still, not too long ago I purchased Herbie Mann's 1971 LP Push Push; disenchanted with it, I thought "How many times in my life will I listen to this again?" A scary thought, if taken to further extremes.

My advice: enjoy your forties, they are an undiscovered territory, and be wary of albums that look like this:

http://www.fashhh.com/users/7/6/e/76e_per_244393771/blog_images/71065529...