The first one

Today is my 60^th birthday. A few months ago when I was thinking about how I’d like to mark it there really was only one option for me – a massive, fun Glam Rock Disco Party where we dressed up in sequins and velvet and boogied the night away to ALL my favourite songs from the 70s and 80s.

I sent ‘Save the dates’ to lots of friends and within seconds of the texts going out I had dozens of replies saying ‘YES! And I know EXACTLY what I’m going to wear!’  I was working on the playlist – apparently there’s no need for a DJ and disco unit these days – when tragedy, and I mean tragedy, struck.  Exactly two months ago, my husband of 27 years dropped dead. No warning. Alive and enjoying a weekend away in Cornwall one minute, dead the next.  Ironically, he was my toyboy, seven years younger than me, and I remember thinking years ago that I was going to reach retirement age a full decade ahead of him, and how was that going to work!? I needn’t have given it a second thought.

Naturally, the idea of sequins and bopping to Abba and Wham!, didn’t seem quite so appealing, so I cancelled the party, and the future I thought I was going to have faded before me.

But while I was trying to get my head around what had happened and why – I’m not succeeding – I couldn’t help thinking that my impending new decade was still worth a celebration.  I mean getting to 60 is a feat, and one that, well, some people never reach.  So I decided to find a different way to mark my birthday.

Whoever said that 60 is the new 40 is wrong.  For me 60 feels like the new 25.  Okay so you don’t have quite the same aches and pains at that age, but you do have a sense of achievement: you’ve got a job; you’re out of student digs and into somewhere of your own; you’re earning and so have money to spend. When I was 25, the fact that I’d achieved all of these things gave me a confidence to want to get out and experience the world. 

Aged 60, I’m experiencing the freedom that comes with having almost grown up children, my mortgage paid off,  still in a job, and with enough health and fitness to enjoy playing tennis and practicing Pilates several times a week.  I have re-found the desire to get out there and see the world.

So…my new way of celebrating my 60^th birthday is to plan something new and fun for each month of the next year.  It might be something big (a we-deserve-it-get-away-from-it-all holiday to Bali with my two daughters); something small (maybe a trip to the theatre to see a top West End production); or something I’ve always wanted to do (front row seats at the US Open Tennis Championships in New York). I’m keen to learn a new skill (I’ve already enrolled in a one week intensive Pilates course), and maybe take up a new hobby (dancing? swimming? all ideas welcome).   And of course, I’m hoping that there will be lots of laughter involved in all of this.

At the end of the year I plan to reorganise that Glam Rock Disco party, and celebrate the fact that I have, hopefully, survived and had a year to remember.

I appreciate that given what’s happened to my husband, this might sound rather hard-hearted and selfish, especially as it will involve having a lot of fun without him to share it with me.  Yes,  I guess in lots of ways it is selfish.  But his inexplicable and sudden death has made me all the more determined to live life, to laugh, to hold my daughters, my family and my friends more closely and dearly and to enjoy my time with them. And what better time to be selfish than when you’re 60 – hence Selfish At Sixty.

In the words of that other SAS – ‘Who dares wins’ – I’m going to dare.  I hope you’ll join me on my journey and see if I win.