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Forgive the possible self indulgence here, but reaching the half century does tend to make most of us assess exactly where we are on life's great road map. 

'Its just a number'. We hear this a lot and indeed I myself have been known to have uttered those very words.

I should have known. It felt like a huge black cloud. The nearness of a fiftieth birthday seemed to heighten an awareness of how things change with the passing years. Upon waking the uppermost question in my mind was 'where the bloody hell am I and what was I doing last night?' It is now 'where the bloody hell are my slippers?'.

Turning 50 feels like a curtain coming down. It's is perhaps inevitable that there is a tendency to reflect on both the recent past and on what now seems ancient history. When people of a certain age tell me that they have no regrets I tend to think they are either in denial or have been incredibly lucky never to have taken a single wrong turn in life. The trick I think is to leave regrets in a storeroom rather than carry them around.

In the months leading up to my 50th I seemed to want to fight what I saw as a dying of the light, to prove to myself that I could still 'party like it's 1999'. Foolish. Better not to fight it. Frankly, that is depressing. Better to just let it happen.

Being 50 is better than being almost 50. There's a calmness now, a wish not to overthink or overindulge. Above all there is a wish to listen more to those around me, to recognize their needs and qualities more. In short to quit the self absorption. To see the value of simplicity in this over complicated world. To observe.