Mid-life crisis

I had an epiphany at 5.30 a.m. the other day in a Shanghai club packed with gangsters, prostitutes and flat-bellied Thai transsexuals. I watched a little guy, in his forties like me, dancing with two women dressed as schoolgirls. Then he collapsed drunkenly to the floor. White-jacketed attendants appeared. Instead of ejecting the man, they gently restored him to his tarts and whisky at the bar. His needs were understood. ‘In Shanghai nobody that age had fun when they were young, before China reformed,’ said a friend showing me the city. ‘Now they have money, everybody’s trying to have a good time before they’re too old.’

I walked out of there deciding my mid-life crisis had begun. I have been in a crisis of one sort or another since prep school, but in several ways this state of emergency is different. For example, I notice how conversations with friends of my age increasingly celebrate our failures as much as our future hopes. We are embarking on what the novelist Edward St Aubyn calls ‘the retreat from Moscow’. It’s not over yet, but we know it’s going to get messy.

St Aubyn also describes how one’s mid-life crisis follows patterns that are completely unoriginal. I have joined the club in which nubile females suddenly ignore me — and my ego is hurt by this however much I love my wife Claire. As a solution, a man my age might ask his spouse to put on a pair of stiletto-heeled shoes and flog him. Oh dear, and I have nose hair. I spend my time worrying about my insides. I just had a full physical and the doctors made the preposterous claim there was nothing wrong with me!

I have begun to fret: how many more wars do I get to cover and is it irresponsible for me to go to Iraq? Should I buy a pair of Crocs? How many seasons have I got left to surf when I cannot even stand up on the board yet? Will I be able to climb Kilimanjaro with my kids Eve and Rider before 1) global warming melts all the tropical snow or 2) they are old enough to do it or I am too shagged to go?

Through the struggles of my adult life I’ve often felt like the self-loathing alcoholic captain played by John Mills in Ice Cold in Alex.