Country mouse on the mid-life crisis

For the first time in my life, the Prime Minister is younger than me. David Cameron's not even old enough to have had a mid-life crisis, unlike some of my friends. One-let's call him Andrew as it's his real name-just had his. He decided to run a marathon. His wife asked us to keep the following Friday free for his funeral.

Amazingly, Andrew was still moving within sight of the finish-you can't really call it running-when a fellow competitor/lunatic collapsed next to him. Andrew stopped to help him and the poor chap recovered enough to stagger across the line. Not the Samaritan. Having stopped, Andrew's whole body seized up and, unable to move any part of his body, he reached the finishing line in the back of an ambulance covered in tin foil. His waiting wife was deeply unimpressed.

Another contemporary has just bought a motorbike so powerful that our Land Rover blushed beside it when he came to visit. There's nothing remarkable in a desire for speed, but few middle-aged men also stop to collect roadkill-behind him on the seat, a dead roe deer was riding pillion. These are dangerous times for us 40-somethings.

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