I’m sitting in the living room, with Lizzie and the kids.
We’re all together… in person, but not in spirit. In fact, each of us is on a device, completely ignoring the others. In my case, I’m perusing Facebook on my laptop.
‘Oh my God!’ I suddenly exclaim. ‘Now that I’m fifty, I keep on getting endless adverts about how to be a super-buff fifty-year-old.’
This is completely true. A month or so ago, the bombardment of my Facebook page by these targeted fitness ads began. They’re all pretty much the same: they show pictures of men with incredible six-packs, who are supposedly all examples of ripped fiftysomethings (all the men in the pictures have large grey beards to show that they are indeed well into middle age. If it wasn’t for their large grey beards, the men could easily be in their early twenties).
I stare at yet another of these adverts, on my Facebook page, ruefully. Can I really make myself look like one of these buff demi-centenarian deities, if I subscribe to whatever health regime the ad is plugging? It just doesn’t seem that likely, now that my middle-age spread is well and truly… well spreading. I could probably muster up the large grey beard… but that would probably be it.
‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Lizzie says, consolingly, ‘I now get endless adverts for TENA on FaceBook.’
‘TENA? What’s that?’ I ask.
‘Incontinence pads,’ Lizzie sighs.
I think about this for a moment.
‘That does make me feel better,’ I say, truthfully (if not, I have to admit, very charitably).
June 2023
P. D. Clifton 
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