It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m watching Annie play hockey, whilst talking to one of the Hockey Dads.
Frankly, I feel a little intimidated whenever I talk to this particular Hockey Dad. He’s the headmaster of a nearby school! A small school, admittedly… but still, a school! A WHOLE school!
I’m always nervous I’ll say something completely stupid to the Hockey Dad, which will make him think… this man is very foolish. I can only pray he doesn’t pass on any of his foolishness to his children. After all, foolishness can be genetic!
That’s part of the reason I feel intimidated by the Hockey Dad. The other reason is he just seems so much more grown-up than me. He seems like a proper sensible dad… whereas I feel like a man-child posing as a man who’s had a child. Talk about imposter syndrome.
The Hockey Dad is now talking about a recent injury he’s had and how it’s taking him longer to recover, now he’s middle-aged. He now drops the bombshell. He’s forty-four.
Forty-four?! That’s five years younger than me. I mean… I’d just assumed he’s older than me, because he’s so much more grown-up! AND he’s the headmaster of a school! (A whole one!).
But no, I haven’t misheard the Hockey Dad. He is indeed five years my junior.
I guess it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Forty-four is easily old enough to be a headmaster. And this chap hasn’t got a grey hair on his head, come to think of it, which should probably have been a clue that he isn’t, say, fifty-four.
Still, I’m always surprised to hear when someone in any kind of position of authority is younger than me. It just seems wrong somehow.
To be honest, it’s not just authority figures I always assume are older than me. As I’ve aged, I’ve continued to assume pretty much everyone in the public eye has at least a few years on me, despite the dwindling likelihood of this.
Children’s presenters are a good example of this. There was a time, when I was a kid, when children’s presenters were all older than me (I’m thinking of UK presenters like Mike Read, Chris Tarrant, Phillip Schofield and Noel Edmonds – who, weirdly, I ended up working for, btw, but that’s a story for another day). I mean, of course they were! I was a child… and they were professional, working children’s presenters! Of course they were older than me!
I kind of looked up to these kids’ presenters. They were a bit like surrogate, televised parents. And so, as I grew up, my default assumption continued to be that any kids’ TV presenter must be older than me. Even though, by the time I hit my twenties and then my thirties and forties, clearly they weren’t.
Dick and Dom? At least ten years older than me, obviously, I thought! Jen from Milkshake? Old enough to be my Mum! Sam and Mark? Octogenarians, practically!
My weird delusion continues to this day. Even though I’m probably past being double the age of most kids’ TV presenters, by now.
Annie’s hockey finishes (the Hockey Dad is very complimentary about a goal she scores – and offers her the kind of constructive, grown-up advice I’m totally hopeless at giving) and we head back home, for lunch.
Whilst we’re eating at the kitchen table, I pick up my mobile phone and begin to scan the headlines – rudely ignoring my family.
The Conservative leadership race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss is heating up. Well, I say that… everyone seems to have decided already that Truss is going to be the victor.
It’s then that I notice Liz Truss’s age…
… forty-seven!
She’s forty-seven!
She’s two years younger than me!
I feel aghast. I assumed she was about sixty or something!
This is the first time, ever, that the leader of our country will actually be younger than me.
It just seems completely wrong.
Against nature.
Like the natural order has been turned upside down.
This country is in trouble, I think. BIG trouble.*
* This post was written just before Truss became Prime Minster, in September 2022… so I didn’t know, at the time, just how much trouble the country would actually be in, under a Truss premiership. And the rest, as they say, is history…
P. D. Clifton 
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