Turning 53 bugs the hell out of me

GIVE HIM A BREAK:It's a nowhere age and it seems pointless to even acknowledge it. There is no better distraction than to live a rock 'n' roll dream for the second time, writes Ferdia MacAnna.

NEXT MONTH I will be 53, along with Adam Ant and Bruce Willis. It didn't bother me when I turned 30 or 40 or even when I hit 50. But for some reason, turning 53 bugs the hell out of me. It's a nowhere age and it seems pointless to even acknowledge it.

If I had my way, I would skip the birthday altogether. However, my kids would never stand for that. Birthdays are sacred in our house. Not quite as sacred as our four dogs and three cats and the gekko in the glass cage, but birthday rituals run a very close second to the pet tarantula (also in a glass cage).

Incidentally, the tarantula, named Chewy, subsists on crickets which occasionally escape and turn upstairs in our home into Arizona, producing the kind of noises that enliven campfires at night in ancient cowboy films.

Anyway, I guess I'm stuck with this birthday. No doubt I will receive presents and congratulations and a bit of slagging along with a card wishing me 'Happy 53rd Birthday' (are there such cards? Maybe they stop at 50 except for big numbers like 70 or 100 or 150).

What is so intimidating about being 53? Maybe it's just me. Or perhaps it's a bloke thing. A deep suspicion that once a man gets past 50, he becomes irrelevant to society, an extra in his own movie instead of its star.

As a Baby Boomer, I come from a cultural and generational mindset that never really embraced growing old, or growing up for that matter.

We try to remain young for as long as possible. I was never a believer in the "Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Good Looking Corpse" credo. I'm more a proponent of "Live Slow, Don't Do Anything Stupid and Try To Stop Your Bits Falling Off".

Okay, so my hair has vanished, my knees lock after 15 minutes whenever I'm watching Bray Wanderers at home, I have to squint to see the stage when I accompany my kids to concerts (at the recent Linkin Park gig it didn't help that the band looked like Hobbits) and I have long since given up attempting somersaults whenever I manage to score a goal in football games against my 11-year-old son.

But that doesn't mean that I am getting old. A person can acknowledge the ageing process without having to succumb to it.

On Sunday, I saw Helen Mirren in a bikini at 62 revealing the body of a 26-year-old - this was merely in a newspaper, unfortunately. Goldie Hawn and Dolly Parton look wonderful at 62 and at 70, Jane Fonda could pass for 62. Blues legend BB King is 80 and still plays around 300 gigs a year, while Jack Nicholson (71) and Peter O'Toole (76) seem vigourous and more relevant than many younger Hollywood stars.

On the other hand, there is Ronnie Wood (61). Ronnie is still at least a year away from maturity and seems determined to invent a whole new category of booze-fuelled daft behaviour which is a bit sad.

It seems that growing older, you're either an icon or an eejit. Which will I be? Is it possible to choose? Does still having dreams at 53 condemn you into the second category? Is that why men play golf? So they can avoid making dorks of themselves anywhere but on a manicured lawn while wearing matched pastel separates?

Having a band is my golf. A few years back I reformed my rock and roll band, Rocky De Valera and the Gravediggers (b. Nov, 1977). We play a type of high energy noisy guitar rock that is about as contemporary as David Hasselhoff's perm.

Reactions from friends and family vary from incredulity to mild enthusiasm to sheer terror.Hazards include finding yourself pointing the wrong way on stage and getting a dazed and confused response from an audience comprised mainly of pre-teens and their grandparents.

Nevertheless, we play whenever our lives permit and wherever anyone wants us enough to cover our expenses. To date, we have managed nearly a dozen gigs - to us, the equivalent of a world tour.

A highlight was a tea-time gig in Tower Records to a crowd two or three decades younger, many of whom removed their iPod earpieces to listen to a band who broke up before the guys in Fall Out Boy had been born. My wife said that she hadn't realised that Tower had a Natural History section.

Perhaps the truth is that I don't really know what I'm doing by playing in a band at my age. Maybe I'm trying to prove that you don't have to be a Rolling Stone (b. 1962) to rock when you're past 50.

And who'd have thought that Meryl Streep (59) would one day succumb to mid-life madness by jumping around belting out Abba numbers? If she can get away with it, then so can we.

We ordinary types can reclaim our youth, though it's likely to be at the cost of our dignity. Try looking cool when your guitar strap snaps mid-song and a heavy electric guitar lands on your toe.

The real surprise for me is that making noise provides an oasis of calm and rejuvenation against the reality that time is running out.

All I can say is that pursuing a mad dream in middle-age is a brilliant way of taking your mind off birthdays.