Certain things simply arrive into your life at 40, inexplicably and unsuspected. Friends—the people you once slept on timber crates with at festivals or begged for painkillers during staff meetings or who held your coat as you kissed someone called “Climpf” by the large speaker—will start downloading bird-recognition apps onto their phones. Women you know—potentially the same women who used to make you meals made up entirely of toast, or color in the holes in your tights with ballpoint pen, or hide your cigarettes in a hole in a tree to share—will start watching gardening shows. People from your past—the ones who drove you to the seaside on a Friday night in your 20s to kiss local bar staff and eat chips—will start buying waterproof coats.

One thing that people at this stage in their life

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