50 Not Out - Looming on the Horizon

Getting to 50 is always going to be a slightly traumatic experience. It takes a lot of self-delusion to convince yourself that you're young and hip - a lot more than I possess. After a short period of reflecting on the prospect shortly after my 49th birthday, I decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to focus on the positives and work on some of the negatives of increasing maturity.

Focussing on the positives is an easy thing to do. I count my blessings pretty much every day. I have a wonderful wife, a son who finally seems to be shaking off the teenage lethargy and becoming a fine young man, and of course a dog who manages to make me laugh out loud most days. We have a house that we're happy in and enough money coming in through the door to be able to get it looking the way we want to. We can also just about afford to run Moonshine, even if that means that the old Volvo has had to soldier on for a few more years than it would otherwise have had to.

The main negative that could be relatively easily dealt with has been a steadily expanding waistline caused by all the comfortable living, which led to a warning about blood pressure and cholesterol from the doc a couple of years go. So since October, Missy and I have both been working hard at the gym and swapping high calorie goodies for fruit and salads. We've both lost about 20lb since then and feel much fitter and healthier. With me being only four years younger than the age at which my father suffered his first heart attack, it's probably an important lifestyle change.

To celebrate the actual start of my second half century, there could only ever be one place to be. We loved our trip to the BVI in 2005, but missed out on visiting Anegada due to some unsettled weather. What better way could there be to mark a significant personal milestone than watching the sunset from a beach restaurant on one of the world's most beautiful islands , with a cocktail in one hand and locally caught lobsters on the grill.

So, on 6th March 2008, we headed off for ten days sailing the BVI. The most direct way of getting there is to Antigua with BA, so we also tacked on a couple of days there at the end of the trip to give ourselves a soft landing back to reality.