John OConnell - The Midlife Manual: Your Very Own Guide to Getting Through the Middle Years

Getting older is a licence to be angry. About anything the more trivial the better. And once we start, we cant stop.

One minute we are carefree 20-year-olds, oblivious to the minor worries of the world around us; the next we are posting strongly worded threats on internet discussion forums about our neighbours wheelie bins. But doesnt it feel good? The rising pulse, the adrenalin rush, the dilated pupils Its a bit like the last time you took E.

Untrustworthy, anecdotal evidence gathered from the discussion forum thread postings of our fellow south London residents suggests the topics most likely to raise the average midlifers blood pressure are:

• speed bumps
• antisocial people having house parties
• the unsightliness of decaying road accident flowers
• schools being closed for elections/ snow/gas leaks
• toddlers weeing in the street
• aeroplane noise
• foxes chewing through the pipes of garden watering systems, then pooing on your doorstep
• an unidentified loud humming noise
• the price of petrol
• other peoples security lights

• It increases your risk of having a heart attack. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine tracked 1,055 medical students for 36 years. They found that the angry ones were six times more likely to suffer a heart attack by the age of 55 and three times more likely to develop heart or blood vessel disease. (No, we dont know how the researchers measured their subjects anger. Number of plates thrown per month?)
• Anger reduces your attention span. When youre angry, a surge in brain chemicals like norepinephrine and cortisol makes you hyperfocus, as if you were stalking a deer through a forest. Which you wouldnt be, ever, obviously. But you know, its an attractive image.
• It will come to define you and not in a sexy way like angry young man. Angry old man merely evokes the smell of dandruff and old slippers.

It isnt just wine that inspires nerdish levels of food snobbery. Seemingly proletarian commodities are also open to exploitation by the midlifer intent on a bit of gastronomic one-upmanship. The joy, of course, is to revel in the endless variety available within an innocuous category of foodstuff like tea or cheese; the challenge is to find the most obscure and hard-to-source example, even if it tastes like old socks.

With more than 700 varieties of cheese produced in the UK alone and nearly 400 in France, there is scope for indulgence of trainspotterish proportions as you work your way along the cheese counter. Try to restrain yourself from theming your cheese board, however, eg only cheeses from Wales (Caerphilly, Snowdonia, Y-Fenni) or beginning with the letter V (Vacherin, Blue Vinney, Vignotte). This will make you look like you have too much time on your hands.

Whether you actually serve your cheese course before or after what you used to call pudding but now call dessert isnt in itself important; merely to know that conflicting schools of thought exist is enough.

Feel free to make a fuss in any restaurant that neglects to give your cheeseboard time to reach room temperature or provide a different knife for each cheese to avoid contamination of flavours. Cross off your Christmas card list any guest uncouth enough to cut the point (or nose) off the Brie.

Annoy any obsessive dieters by going on about how chocolate is actually really good for you and not at all fattening if you go for the good stuff with more than 70% cocoa (ie less than 30% fat). Stress that, by raising levels of serotonin (responsible for happy feelings) in the brain, it can lower blood pressure and has even been shown by scientists to ward off cancer.