The business of anti-ageing has become “unbelievably odd”, says Mimi Spencer in The Times. There’s Kim Kardashian’s new facial sling, which apparently helps evade the “saggy jawline of age”. There’s the new phenomenon of taping your mouth shut at night, which supposedly promises “pillow-plump lips” upon waking. Mariah Carey recently said of getting older: “I don’t allow it”. (Then again, she doesn’t allow stairs or overhead lighting either, so you can judge for yourself how successful she’ll be in “holding back the tide”.) I’m ever more perplexed at the hysteria around ageing and what people are willing to do to “avoid the inevitable”. Really, what’s the big deal?

Ageing is glorious. My friends and I no longer have blandly smooth faces; we are “contoured with experience”, and the accumulated years have only added interest, “as they would to a fine wine or good wood”. Staying healthy without tweaks and jabs is less about commandments and more about daily, simple things: a bit less wine, a bit more water, eating when you’re hungry, normal portion sizes, flossing, walking the dog. It’s about letting go, without letting yourself go – there’s no need to become an “eccentric nana in a purple bobble hat with a bit of egg down the front of your anorak”. Just stay somewhat “tuned in”: get your highlights done but leave enough grey to nod to the truth of your years; wear specs to read the menu, but go for cool ones that make you look like a “successful ceramicist”. Find the joy in ageing by doing the exercise you love and eating the meals that nourish you. Not great mounds of them, but enough to “put a smile on your beautiful, expressive, lovely, lived-in face”.

The Midlife Kitchen by Mimi Spencer and Sam Rice is available to pre-order here.

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