Country mouse on the mid-life crisis

From running marathons to buying new motorbikes, Mark sees his friends falling victim to the mid-life crisis

Country mouse, Country Life magazine
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For the first time in my life, the Prime Minister is younger than me. David Cameron's not even old enough to have had a mid-life crisis, unlike some of my friends. One-let's call him Andrew as it's his real name-just had his. He decided to run a marathon. His wife asked us to keep the following Friday free for his funeral.

Amazingly, Andrew was still moving within sight of the finish-you can't really call it running-when a fellow competitor/lunatic collapsed next to him. Andrew stopped to help him and the poor chap recovered enough to stagger across the line. Not the Samaritan. Having stopped, Andrew's whole body seized up and, unable to move any part of his body, he reached the finishing line in the back of an ambulance covered in tin foil. His waiting wife was deeply unimpressed.

Another contemporary has just bought a motorbike so powerful that our Land Rover blushed beside it when he came to visit. There's nothing remarkable in a desire for speed, but few middle-aged men also stop to collect roadkill-behind him on the seat, a dead roe deer was riding pillion. These are dangerous times for us 40-somethings.

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Country Life

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.