025 This is 40

Notes from a milestone birthday, 'reserved for G-Spot', Hermes scarves and the sacredness of a girls dinner.

Just really celebrating myself! Photo by Myles Kalus

For a good amount of time I thought I was going to be a woman mysterious about her age. To never mention it, or casually knock a few years off. Maybe say things like ‘oh 30-something,’ or ‘a woman never tells!’

I must admit to a minor mid-life crisis about turning 40 (40!) this year. It’s too late for me to be a wunderkind! I haven’t written one page of the book I keep talking about and I forgot to have a gap year. But then I remembered a beloved English teacher telling her bunch of awkward 17 year-olds on the verge of everything that we’d never really feel older than we did right then. And then also how lucky, lucky, lucky I am to be 40.

Anyway, 40 isn’t 40 like it used to be. How can it be when all of the markers of success are so out of reach for many or we don’t want the same things as previous generations and also we definitely don’t baste ourselves with baby oil and literally roast ourselves in the sun. Though I’m not sure how I feel about Kylie Jenner (et el) giving the coordinates of her boob job. Is it good we’re no longer pretending we just have good genes or has another floor of requisite maintenance been unlocked? There was an article in The Times recently about how different 60 looks now, and so does 40.

In any case, I had a party and it was maybe one of the top 10 days of my life. My friends, all women (mostly, I did allow a few token male friends but absolutely no husbands!) are ones I’ve picked up along the way. I left my small town in Tasmania when I was 18 and moved to Melbourne. Lara, one of the world’s original extroverts, was the first friend I made and thank god for that as I literally may have disappeared into the corner. I’ve lived in several share houses - including one in Redfern where the parties were legendary and I met two of my dearest friends. I’ve changed jobs too many times and I stole a few of my husband’s friends. Because I’ve never stayed put, I don’t really have a cohesive ‘group,’ more like a series of them and a slew of Whatsapp chats. But people in my life always get along with each other because they tend to be friendly and open and also the best.

Lara, who took pity on me as an out-of-her-depth 18 year-old (with ill-advised black hair) in my first week in Melbourne! Photo by Myles Kalus

My friend Alana flew in from Dublin! My university friends all flew up from Melbourne! The next day both my head and my cheeks hurt from laughing and also 10,000 glasses of champagne. Birthdays should be celebrated! Because by 40 we’ve all experienced hardships and sadness and disappointments and you realise this about others, too. Ah, grace, it’s a work in progress. But happy moments, well, these need to be grabbed with both hands when they come your way. Dancing wildly with your girlfriends after all that has been is practically enlightenment.

Some things I’ve learned at 40 (but am still working on!)

You can’t control how things will turn out by trying to imagine every worst case scenario. And anyway, most of the truly worst things come out of nowhere and knock you for six.

Then the thing is, you get through them.

There is more than one way of being tough!

To borrow from Graydon Carter, it is important not to confuse kindness with weakness.

My mum was right about a bob suiting me. Some of us don’t have growing hair! But as my incredible hairdresser John Pulitano at Headcase Hair says, there are bobs and there are bobs. It has to be short enough or long enough and not the mumsy length in-between.

Not that there’s anything wrong with looking mumsy!

Re-reading your favourite books is like catching up with old friends.

Though life is too short to finish a book you hate. Abandon!

Good for her, not for me, remains an ultimate perfect refrain for when judgement rears its sour head.

Real happiness is hardly ever ‘documented’ or at least not by you. But do try and get photos with your friends when you can! Make your partner take photos of you with the baby! The best decision I have made this year was have my friend Myles take photos at my 40th because I knew I would be having too much fun to take any. My plan is to print them out and send them to everyone - which is another thing I would like to be better at.

Even if you hate the photo, in ten years time you will be aghast that you thought you looked [insert favoured insult for yourself].

Be kinder to yourself - nobody has been harder on me than, well me, and maybe in my 40s I’d like to be nicer (to others and also to myself).

There is no fashion high like a vintage find! This is the Chanel vest I found for my never-ending birthday celebrations.

Most things will blow over, did they deserve the angst you gave them (no).

Turning up counts for a lot!

A silk scarf is essential. Especially in my lifelong goal to be a grandee. Two groups of friends gifted me with beautiful Hermès scarves and I plan to become one of those chic women who have always have one on their person - worn in a multitude of ways - at all times. I was in Bangkok for work this week and tied one around my dress, which I know is me trying too hard to be a Copenhagen girl/Leandra Medine, but it felt like a holiday?

Nobody has work/life ‘balance’ perfectly calibrated. Everybody is doing their best!

But kids really love it when you turn up to at least some of their special days at school. You will never have a taste of what it must be like to be a celebrity than when you show up to one of these things when you’re not always there. Also, I don’t think teenagers will run up to meet you in the playground! Treasure this.

Real style is a lot more about how you wear things than what you’re wearing.

The best way to see your friends is to book in for the next dinner as soon as you’re paying the bill. Three months sounds ridiculously far away but it comes around fast!

Also, girls’ dinner is a balm for the soul and sacred and essential. Make an agenda and tick everything off!

Only drink black coffee in Europe.

It’s very glamorous to be someone who has a definitive list when asked places to go in a city.

So too an exact martini order.

(And your favourite champagne - Ruinart Blanc de Blanc and Billecart-Salmon pour moi).

Trust your own instincts about what you like. If you’re drawn to it, it’s you.

Everybody has their own challenges, be gracious toward this.

I’ll never forget a social worker friend telling me that the people who are hardest to love usually need it the most. I really do think about this a lot.

Most of the time, it’s not personal.

Let it go.

Let it go!

BOOKS

Gwyneth by Amy Odell. Obviously I gobbled this up and I think Amy Odell is an incredible reporter - as another great reporter, Marisa Meltzer said on the Fashion People podcast, she is the kind of reporter who will call people way down in the IMDB credits for their take. It is the people on the periphery and the junior roles who tend to have a pretty good take on who a person is. You can tell a lot about someone by how they treat someone who can’t do anything for you. BUT, we shouldn’t all be judged forever on our worst day! My main takeout though was that we can never really know Gwyneth, she is complex and enigmatic and I love how she has never pretended to be a regular person. She’s not like us! Also, “reserved for G-Spot,” I MEAN.

I’m working my way through an incredible stack of books courtesy of Chanel’s Literary Rendezvous (yes, the absolute best mail day and the only book club I want to be part of). And I keep dog-earing pages in Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett.

Obv I loved this line about nice things, “Having nice things makes you feel like you’re doing a good job and shuts everybody up.” Ooft.

I absolutely inhaled - flashlight under the doona style - Claire Lombardo’s Same As It Ever Was. A rumination on marriage and middle age and parenting and all the love and hard edges and disappointments that you keep poking at.

Obviously as a person still working in the media I’m also reading the latest Conde Nast biography, Empire of the Elite. Annoyingly I left my copy at the pub (I never go anywhere without a book, just in case!) so had to reorder it and I’m left on the edge of my seat. So far I think I agree with Emilia Petraca that these golden days of unimaginable excess and unlimited budgets does, with hindsight, seem like a beautiful grift? “We were expected to be walking billboards for the fantasy we were selling,” said Vanity Fair editor Dana Brown. People are willing to pay a lot for cultural cache and a taste of the inner sanctum.

Also, obsessed with this detail feretted out by Emilia from one of my favourite imperial grand dames (I have such a weakness for women like this): Diana Vreeland demanded that her secretaries serve her a daily scoop of ice cream with a “precise, semi-melted consistency.” If you’re going to be a diva, do it properly!

Love,

Annie xx