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Six things middle-aged people probably shouldn't be into

IN your 40s but with hopelessly childish tastes? These are the hobbies that you need to drop to grow the f**k up: 

Collecting action figures

Shelves full of action figures, whether Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, French Resistance Action Man or Funko Pop! Orko, are a great way of saying ‘my school bully threw one of these in the canal and I have never recovered. For the really stunted, build up a My Little Pony collection worth 30 grand.

Fixating on the food of your childhood

You’re an adult, free to explore sophisticated world cuisine. So why does your diet consist of Birds Eye potato waffles, thrice-weekly McDonald’s and Coco Pops? If you still eat Pot Noodles when their novelty value wore off in the 1980s, consult a psychiatrist.

Stuffed toys

More of a female thing. A few cuddly toys are kind of cute, but dozens of the bastards dotted around your bedroom will make your partner feel as if they’re putting on a live sex show for Paddington and a host of dead-eyed Beanie Babies.

Insanely detailed military modelling kits

You loved Airfix kits as a child, and the market has responded with kits for adults that are essentially a major construction project. By the time you’ve completed your enormous model of an aircraft carrier it would have been cheaper, easier and more useful to build an actual Volvo from scratch.

Competing with your own children

Whether it’s beating your five-year-old at football in the back garden or pointing out that you’ve made a far superior fairy cake, competing with small children is bad. And they will go on to be horribly competitive with their own kids, ruining Christmas games of Monopoly well into the 2050s.

Obsessing over superhero movies

If Black Panther is your favourite film, maybe watch more films. And if you think The Dark Knight Rises has deep intellectual themes to rival Ulysses, maybe read a book.

We’ll all have a great 2021, and the other dumbshit things you believed this time last year

REMEMBER how idiotically optimistic you were a fortnight into this shitstorm, 12 months ago? Remember how unthinkingly you believed these laughable delusions? 

We’ll be back to normal by summer

There’s no way a respiratory disease could survive the baking heat and relentless aridity of a British summer, you believed without evidence. This’ll blow over in weeks. You even booked a lavish summer holiday as a treat for staying cooped up in your flat. The refund has now been put back to May.

We’ll always appreciate the NHS

The Clap for Carers was a heartwarming moment of unity, a mass realisation that our heroic NHS workers should be financially rewarded. The idea that the prime minister whose life they saved would f**k them over with a real-terms pay cut seemed beyond belief.

This will ruin the Tories

The missed COBRA meetings, delayed national lockdown and PPE shortages all meant the writing was on the wall for the Tories, especially with Keir Starmer as a new, popular and effective leader of the opposition. What a complete tool you were for believing that bollocks. 127,000 Covid deaths and Boris is about to take Hartlepool.

Some time at home will do us good

Pressing pause on modern life will let us all take stock, we claimed. ‘Why have I been wasting old bananas when I could be baking them into lovely hot banana bread?’ you said. Because they taste like stale shit and being at home for a year is boring. Seems obvious, but 2020 was a different and altogether more stupid time.

All our problems will be solved by a vaccine

Once the vaccine comes along, one jab and the world instantly returns to normal. Apart from the rollout, and the other countries, and the different efficacity of different jabs, and the variants, and all those other minor details that mean we’ll be social distancing for the rest of our lives.

We’ll all have a great 2021

Okay, 2020 might be a write-off, you were prepared to admit. But 2021? That will be a year of hope and joy and renewed life and huge parties, parties like we’ve never partied before. Remember that next week when you’re pathetically grateful to be able to book a table in a chain pub’s beer garden.

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