Ageing Like Wine?

There’s a moment, somewhere between your second coffee and your third gentle scolding of someone who forgot to carry an umbrella, when you realise: you’re the oldest person in the room.

I’m 39. Most of my colleagues are in their early to mid-twenties. Some were still in school when I was writing front-page crime stories or chasing deadlines in dying newsrooms. At first, it was mildly amusing. But somewhere along the way, it turned into something gentler. Stranger. Warmer.

It turned into belonging.

I didn’t see it coming. The boys — yes, I say boys — flock to me for everything from career tips to relationship advice to “Bro, where do I take her for a first date?” Somehow I’ve become the de facto Papa Bear at our regular bar near the office; keeping the peace, calming the heartbreak, and making sure nobody drunkenly DMs their ex, or veers too close to the girls at the next table. There are better ways to approach cute girls in bars, and nobody gets to be cringe with me around.

I can’t lie: it gives me flashbacks. Not just memories, but vivid replays of who I was before life punched me in the gut, picked me up, and then did it all over again. In their rants, fears, overconfidence, and even poor decisions, I see versions of me I had forgotten. And instead of cringing, I feel something closer to grace.

There’s a 23-year-old at work who used to be an unapologetic Andrew Tate fanboy. The first time I heard him quote some absurd nonsense about “alpha energy,” I nearly choked on my coffee. But I didn’t lash out. I asked questions. Pushed back. Challenged him, then showed up again the next day to talk more.

Today, he doesn’t exactly send me Instagram Reels about emotional regulation but at least he no longer talks about how Andrew Tate is a victim of trumped up charges. I’ll take the win. He’s nowhere close to perfect but neither am I. And that’s the point.

Being around these young men gives me something I didn’t realise I needed: a chance to gently rewrite the past. To steer younger, flawed, unsure versions of myself away from cliffs I once leapt off. Not with sermons, but with stories. Not with authority, but with honesty.

I’ve started introspecting more than ever these days. Not in the depressive, middle-aged existential crisis way. But in the “God, I wish someone had told me this when I was 25” kind of way. I think about what I did right. What I got wrong. What I survived. And in doing so, I realise how much of that version of me is still alive, and well… wiser. More tired, sure. But more forgiving.

This month I’m doing something I haven’t done in over a decade; I’m going to watch an action movie with the boys from work. I know how unremarkable that sounds. But for someone whose friendships were forged in trauma, alcohol, or shared newsroom PTSD, this is refreshingly mundane and I am unduly excited about it.

Maybe ageing really is like wine. It doesn’t mean getting better, and nobody can attest to this more than me. It means learning how to be still, how to listen, how to stay soft even when the world has tried to make you hard.

So yes, I’m 39. Yes, I’m older than most people I work with. But for the first time in a long, long time, I don’t feel like I’m running out of time.

I feel like I’ve found it again.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.