The grass is always greener

I generally forget that I am fast approaching 40 (although I’m probably ageing at the same speed as everybody else on the planet).

It is only when I return from a weekend away and my mum asks whether I met anyone ‘nice’, because she wants to see me settled before she ‘pops off’, that I start worrying about it.

But last weekend, I suddenly felt very old. The catalyst for this state of mind was an impromptu school reunion. There were nine lads from my year there, six of whom I hadn’t set eyes on for more than 20 years. It transpired that eight of the nine were married and had 12 children between them, with another on the way.

Realistically, it is not surprising that in a group of 10 39-year-old men, eight are fathers. It’s just that most of the people I hang around with (some of whom are older than me) are still childless and unmarried.

As the evening wore on, I heard countless ‘funny’ stories about kids’ behaviour, while I ‘regaled’ people with my numerous trips around the globe. Some of them openly expressed envy when I told them that I am semi-retired, take a two-month holiday every summer and head off on trips across the UK whenever I fancy.

One by one, the fathers made their excuses and left. Some had longer journeys than others, but two left because they ‘didn’t want to miss the last Tube home’ – despite the fact that myself and the other single man needed to catch that very same train. It was more the case of them not wanting a hangover when their toddlers woke them at 07.00 on Saturday morning.

On the journey home (and we didn’t even run the risk and catch the last Tube – we are almost 40, after all), the other single lad told me how he was registered with a couple of dating websites based in Colombia and the Philippines. I listened incredulously as he rhapsodised about how stunning the women he was in contact with are. When he told me that none of them speak any English, I asked what he wrote in his emails. ‘I just tell them that I love them,’ he said. Anyway, he’s off to Colombia at Christmas for the second time this year. Perhaps that’s where I’m going wrong – contacting women who speak the same language as me.

But if that was the depths to which most single men in their late-30s have sunk, the idea of a couple of toddlers jumping up and down on my bed in six hours’ time, and a wife nagging me as to why I was out so late, suddenly held a certain appeal.