Nigel Marsh - Smart, Stupid and Sixty

Twenty years ago, Nigel Marsh was an overweight mortgage slave struggling to balance a career, marriage and four children under eight. Until he lost his job.

In Fat, Forty and Fired , Nigel wrote about falling off the corporate hamster wheel and surviving. Now that hes approaching sixty, he cant help but notice its been a while since he stepped onto that wheel with other hamsters. One day he reads that a graduate trainee who used to work for him in London is now a global CEO with an office on the top floor of a skyscraper in New York. Nigel, by contrast, is wearing a dressing-gown and sitting at his writing desk in a dank storage room under his garage in Sydney. Its enough to give anyone a moment of self-doubt even a man whose groundbreaking TED Talk on work-life balance has been downloaded a whopping five million times.

Could it be that Nigels most successful days are behind him? Or is conventional success simply that conventional success? And is it possible that his happiest days lie ahead?

In his memoir for his sixth decade on earth, Nigel ponders ageing well, sex, parenting adult children, his parents passing, and the secret to his living a happy life. By turns humorous, thought-provoking, poignant and life-affirming, Smart, Stupid & Sixty is a celebration of the third trimester as a privilege to be enjoyed rather than a sentence to be endured.

F OR AS LONG as I can remember my mother answered her telephone in exactly the same way. Not by saying hello. Not by stating her name. Nor by enquiring who was calling.

No. My dear mum answered the phone by saying, Marston Magna 850172.

Always.

As I write this I can clearly hear the business-like tone in which she said it. Somehow putting energy and meaning into the numbers and ending with a friendly little uplift on her delivery of the 2.

Its a generational thing. Like many people in their eighties, Mum spent her early childhood hearing her parents do it, as back then it was a useful way of letting the caller know if theyd been put through to the correct number by the telephonist at a small rural communitys manual switchboard.

However, it was now a behaviour whose original purpose had long passed, and was retained solely out of habit.

Over the years I tried to get Mum to stop telling me her phone number when I called.

Marston Magna... shed start.

Mum, its me... Id interject.

850... shed bulldoze on.

Nigel... Id try again.

172, shed finish.

Mum, you know you neednt recite your number when you pick up the phone, Id venture gently.

Dont be silly, Nidgey, she said, using one of her favourite nicknames for me. (Strangely, she always pronounced it to rhyme with midge. But hey, it was preferable to Birdy Face, one of her other favourites.) If I dont, how will people know if theyve got through to the right person?

Theyd find out soon enough when they speak to you. But forget other people when its me calling, I know its you. Youre my mum.

Mmmm... shed say non-committally, employing her version of the consent and evade strategy at which she was an Olympic champion.

And shed then carry on exactly as before. Id drop it because, lets face it, there are other more important things in life to worry about. Recently, however, I started my campaign again as I had taken to calling her every day.

Mums health had taken a worrying turn for the worse. She was already struggling with myeloma and the effects of chemotherapy, but now she was also increasingly out of breath and had been rushed to hospital on two occasions as her lungs were filling up with liquid giving her the appalling sensation of drowning from within. After her last visit, she had been diagnosed with inoperable Stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer motherload so to speak, or as Mum put it, Ive got a two-for-one deal, Nidgey.

I was urgently making arrangements to come over to see her as it looked increasingly likely that there mightnt be the opportunity for many more trips in the future. In the meantime, she insisted on painstakingly starting each of our conversations by pointlessly telling me her phone number.

I decided to try a new tactic.

Marston Magna 850172, she said upon answering the phone, when I next called.

Oh sorry, I wanted Marston Magna 85017... , I replied, before hanging up.

To her credit she was still laughing when I rang back. But did it stop her telling me her phone number from then on? Did it hell they dont make them like my mum anymore.

I HAVE WRITTEN three books before this. To my surprise and delight, the first one, Fat, Forty and Fired , was a bestseller locally and even enjoyed a modicum of success internationally. It was translated into a number of languages and the film and TV rights were bought and trips to Hollywood enjoyed. To this day it is what they call in the trade a good backlister, still stocked and sold in shops twenty years later.

As the title suggests, Fat, Forty and Fired describes the year I lost my job as an overweight forty-year-old. Long story short: having fallen off the corporate hamster wheel, I decided I needed to stay off it. Easier said than done with no income and four young kids to provide for.

But despite the risk and uncertainty, I was convinced I had to reassess and reprioritise my life. After serious reflection I resolved to try to change my life in every way. I wanted to put the people I loved, and the things I valued, at the centre of my life, not leave them at the edges as my career had been forcing me to ever again. And that required having to face the very real fear, and inevitable downsides, involved in genuine change and refusing to do things simply because theyre the conventional path.

Its a constant challenge but Im every bit as committed to my resolution now as I was twenty years ago. In some ways you could say this book is a once a decade check-in to hold myself to account to see if Im still on the right track as I head into my seventh decade, with all the new issues that involves.

Ive had two books published since Fat, Forty and Fired , one of which was my first check-in, Fit, Fifty and Fired Up . Whilst dear to my heart and mildly successful locally, they didnt attract any international attention and sank with barely a trace after the natural short lifespan of a book these days. My writing career could be said to be going in reverse. Initial success followed by gentle decline.

Despite this, over the years since my first book came out I have repeatedly been asked when my next one is going to be published. Im never quite sure if this is because people would welcome it or want reassurance Ive given up flogging a dead horse. Irrespective, my stock answer for a number of years was: When Im fifty. Which turned out to be true (exhibit A: Fit, Fifty and Fired Up ). And in more recent times, since my half-century it has been: When Im sixty.

On the one hand it was a useful way of dodging the question, but on the other it contained an element of truth. I have come to like the idea of writing a book once a decade. It is often said that the unexamined life isnt worth living. Wise words, but at the same time it could equally valuably be said that the overexamined life is rarely worth reading about.