The first half is about building a career, a home, a useful place in society. Carl Jung, who had a mid-life breakdown of his own, argued that life was a game of two halves. And it begins with a long nap.įor the first serious analysis of the problems of middle age, we have to fast forward to the early 20th Century. What could be more mid-life than this? It's about changing and finding a purpose. At one point he meets Imagination, who advises him to "make amends in middle age before your strength fails". Written in 1400, it tells of a man who falls asleep and dreams of a quest to find the purpose of life. The first recorded use of the phrase "middle age" is in William Langland's poem, Piers Plowman. As my previous books are mainly about biblical history, this proved to be something of a departure, though the history of the mid-life crisis goes back further than you might think. The book that emerged I called The Dark Night of the Shed - a book that turned out to be an exploration of men, mid-life, spirituality and sheds. But more than that, I wanted a place where I could process all the stuff I was going through. All the great writers had sheds: Dylan Thomas, Roald Dahl, George Bernard Shaw. I turned the rickety structure in the garden of the house I share with my wife and three daughters into a place where I could work. When the shut-door panic hits, we all look for ways out. But they end up just as unhappy, only at a higher speed. Then there's the sports car because they think buying something will cure their sadness. "I want to prove that I can still do it," said a marathon-running friend. Some take up the triathlon and wear unfeasibly tight Lycra. Other men make less drastic attempts to escape. Reggie, of course, faked his own death to break free, only to find his new life wasn't any better. He didn't know the names of the trees and the flowers, but he knew the rhubarb crumble sales figures for Schleswig-Holstein'."
"One day I'll die," says Reggie, during a seminar on instant puddings, "and on my grave it will say: 'Here lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. The ubiquity of these feelings is why David Nobbs, who died last week, was able to create such an enduring character in Reggie Perrin, the corporate man trapped in a meaningless life. But it's not the age, it's the anxiety - those dark nights of the soul, staring at the ceiling, pondering the ultimate question of middle age: "Is that it?" You can't sit down, stand up or pick up any object without emitting a grunt. Hair no longer grows on the head, and you can't stop it growing out of your ears. Aches and pains used to disappear quickly, now they hang around for months. And lots of men in their 40s and 50s feel that the door has closed. The German term for mid-life crisis is Torschlusspanik - "shut-door panic". For the rest of us, middle age is a more turbulent sea. Many sail serenely through it with no issues at all. Something strange happens to men in middle age.
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