h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*floating in, in her usual vague, elf-like manner*

Am I to understand you're turning 40 next year? If so - then so am I!

...but, thanks to h2g2 - I'm rather looking forward to 3 years from now, when I'll be turning 42 - and I'll be THE ANSWER to Life, the Universe... Mua ha haaa...

Hi Titania, yes, I've got a few months left and then I make 40.

I don't mind really. It can't be helped, can it? I just don't feel that old. You're quite right though. There are a few people around here who seem rather proud of being 42, so perhaps that's something to look forward to. Thanks.

Now I think about it, 42 doesn't sound quite as bad as 40.

I've discovered that I keep postponing what I consider to be 'middle-aged' all the time...

...when I was younger, I used to think everyone past 25 was old - and then 30 - and then 35...

..so I've decided to live until I'm at least 100 years old - that would make me middle-aged at 50 - right?

I know how the age for 'old' and 'middle-aged' keeps sliding upwards.

A couple of weeks ago I was with a group of my friends looking at some photographs of us all. The photos were taken about 12 years ago. I was saying how young we all looked. Then somebody pointed out that in another 12 years we would be saying that about how we looked now. So I've been trying to remember that I'm young compared to an older person.

It's just that I sometimes meet people who appear to be, I dunno, not young, getting on a bit, and I always think of them as being older than me. Then I find out that they're only 36 or something.

Well, we must keep smiling, without regard to the huge groups of lines that keep appearing all over my face every time I do.

Well, it's OK as long as they are lines from smiling and laughing and not from frowning and fretting... I think I prefer horizontal rather than vertical ones myself!

I've been wondering when I'll start looking my age - fortunately I've so far been taken for younger than I am - although it used to annoy me when I was younger...

...I remember once when I was waiting for a friend of mine together with her 2-year-old son - an old man stopped to talk to the boy and then asked if it was my son, and when I said no, he said 'I thought you looked too young to have a son his age' - and at that time I was 25!

Ah well, there you have an advantage over me. I'm certainly looking my age. I used to think it was great that when I was 15 I could be mistaken for a mature woman of, er, 20. Now I'm not so thrilled about it.

My sister is three years younger than me but looks to be in her early 20s. It's obvious when people speak to her that they're assuming she is much younger than she really is. She doesn't seem to age at all.

My mother has been mistaken for the mother of my children, rather than the grandmother. Yet she was 63 when the youngest was born. Unfortunately I have failed to inherit the Eternal Youth gene. Maybe it was something to do with my lifestyle in my teens and 20s.
And thirties when I get the chance.

Have you been using h2g2 for a long time, Titania. I seem to have seen your name around quite a lot.

I became a researcher before h2g2 was taken over by the BBC - let me see... that must have been the summer of... of... 2000?