Out of Time

Out of Time
Miranda Sawyer

From the hugely respected journalist Miranda Sawyer, a very modern look at the midlife crisis – delving into the truth, and lies, of the experience and how to survive it, with thoughtfulness, insight and humour.‘You wake one day and everything is wrong. It's as though you went out one warm evening – an evening fizzing with delicious potential, so ripe and sticky-sweet you can taste it on the air – for just one drink … and woke up two days later in a skip. Except you're not in a skip, you're in an estate car, on the way to an out-of-town shopping mall to buy a balance bike, a roof rack and some stackable storage boxes.’Miranda Sawyer’s midlife crisis began when she was 44. It wasn’t a traditional one. She didn’t run off with a Pilates teacher, or blow thousands on a trip to find herself. From the outside, all remained the same. Work, kids, marriage, mortgage, blah. Days, weeks and months whizzed past as she struggled with feeling – knowing – that she was over halfway through her life. It seemed only yesterday that she was 29, out and about.Out of Time is not a self-help book. It’s an exploration of this sudden crisis, this jolt. It looks at how our tastes, and our bodies, change as we get older. It considers the unexpected new pleasures that the second half of life can offer, from learning to code to taking up running (slowly). Speaking to musicians and artists, friends and colleagues, Miranda asks how they too have confronted midlife, and the lessons, if any, that they’ve learned along the way.

Copyright (#ulink_c8f7f2ff-2748-5b40-8690-488c56bb4250)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

Copyright © Miranda Sawyer 2016

Miranda Sawyer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007521081

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007509157

Version: 2017-04-11

Dedication (#ulink_9bfb3687-a64a-5bb8-8575-b22abecdac7d)

For S, P and F

Epigraph (#ulink_c75c3bc5-c9bd-5624-943c-83bf470a653e)

‘Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything’

Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow

‘You’re going to have to fucking swallow this whole fucking life and let it grow inside you like a parasite’

Malcolm Tucker, The Thick of It

Contents

Cover (#ue1058a9b-a66d-507f-9c27-7b619e801701)

Title Page (#u47eb7e27-904d-5bbe-9ee0-3cb84db62c95)

Copyright (#uc079b7b6-a386-5c73-ba27-71bfa7b9e949)

Dedication (#uc5b2e6c4-97d3-5f13-850d-9959ebf5d146)

Epigraph (#u9c1c8f30-18c1-52b6-ada3-12291e3eca0d)

1. Is This It? (#u8e494740-5079-5cf4-b9ba-fa25601384e1)

2. Adult-ish (#u03cc755b-e9fa-5eab-8789-0e39d2449780)

3. Never Mind the 90s (#ua674d11f-aa17-5d32-a524-8c75be1acc8a)

4. Carry On (#u5630aa3d-6269-5d9f-afa4-c150e89266cd)

5. This is a Low (#u29b121de-d806-5529-bfdb-fb720b7bdec4)

6. Jealous (#ua66cb4cd-0bf0-51c2-bf3a-770923fe05ec)

7. Sex (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Fitness (#litres_trial_promo)

9. Looks (#litres_trial_promo)

10. Routine (#litres_trial_promo)

11. Out of It (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Work (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Anger vs. Dismay (#litres_trial_promo)

14. Music (#litres_trial_promo)

15. Playing to Win (#litres_trial_promo)

16. Time (#litres_trial_promo)

17. Long-term (#litres_trial_promo)

18. Death (#litres_trial_promo)

19. Generations (#litres_trial_promo)

20. Now (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)