Miranda Sawyer

From the hugely respected journalist Miranda Sawyer, a very modern look at the midlife crisis âe" delving into the truth, and lies, of the experience and how to survive it, with thoughtfulness, insight and humour. âe~You wake one day and everything is wrong. It's as though you went out one warm evening âe" an evening fizzing with delicious potential, so ripe and sticky-sweet you can taste it on the air âe" for just one drink âe¦ and woke up two days later in a skip. Except you're not in a skip, you're in an estate car, on the way to an out-of-town shopping mall to buy a balance bike, a roof rack and some stackable storage boxes.âe(tm) Miranda Sawyerâe(tm)s midlife crisis began when she was 44. It wasnâe(tm)t a traditional one. She didnâe(tm)t run off with a Pilates teacher, or blow thousands on a trip to find herself. From the outside, all remained the same. Work, kids, marriage, mortgage, blah. Days, weeks and months whizzed past as she struggled with feeling âe" knowing âe" that she was over halfway through her life. It seemed only yesterday that she was 29, out and about. Out of Time is not a self-help book. Itâe(tm)s an exploration of this sudden crisis, this jolt. It looks at how our tastes, and our bodies, change as we get older. It considers the unexpected new pleasures that the second half of life can offer, from learning to code to taking up running (slowly). Speaking to musicians and artists, friends and colleagues, Miranda asks how they too have confronted midlife, and the lessons, if any, that theyâe(tm)ve learned along the way.

Out of Time

Miranda Sawyer drives from Croydon to Swindon, via Stevenage, Harrogate and Cadbury World in Birmingham, on a nice day out around suburban Britain. This is the Britain of motorways and heritage centres, of campaigning housewives and executive housing estates, of boy racers and Essex girls, of Cheshire wives and Scottish golfers. Put on your co-ordinating smart/casual wear (no trainers please) and join her for an evening at a prestigious hotel nightclub, a day in Britain's most average town, a trip round Romford's bourgeois drug addicts, a date with The Lighthouse Family, a few hours with Staffordshire's jet-set. Plus: a hen night, a car cruise, a swingers' special evening, and a lovely Sunday drive to see the new B&Q on the bypass. Forget the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic: this is the rest of it, the vast swathes of inbetweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind your manners Great British Experience. And it may well be where you live.

Miranda Sawyer

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