Paul Thomas: Curmudgeonitis - creeping curse of the middle-aged

Middle age is a harrowing time of life.

You examine yourself in the mirror, even though the exercise becomes progressively more discomforting. You morbidly monitor your body's behaviour and appearance.

Being perpetually on the alert for evidence of physical decline may blind one to the onset of a condition that can plunge an outwardly normal person into mental and emotional disequilibrium.

Medical science is still getting a handle on it, so for the purposes of this column we'll call it curmudgeonitis: the tendency to think and behave like a curmudgeon.

Curmudgeonitis has many voices, but most sufferers display some or all of the following symptoms: a belief that the system is soft on crime; visceral loathing of television personalities; low tolerance of other people's children; zero tolerance of other people's loud music; and a conviction that things aren't what they used to be and the world is going to hell in a handcart.

While curmudgeonitis has always been with us, it's now assailing baby boomers, the generation that many experts thought would be immune.

The baby-boomer psyche was shaped by a titanic clash of wills and values with one of the most curmudgeonly generations in history.

It was widely assumed that this defining experience would enable them to accept gracefully their eventual and inevitable marginalisation.

However, anecdotal evidence - classic hits stations, talkback, dinner party conversation, another Rolling Stones world tour - suggests that baby boomers are as susceptible as previous generations.

A classic symptom of advanced curmudgeonitis is an enthusiasm for capital punishment.

This is sometimes triggered by the realisation that locking up hardcore criminals and throwing away the key essentially means putting them on a regime of television and body-building at vast expense to the taxpayer.

And just as viruses stay one step ahead of medical science by mutating into new and deadlier forms, there are mounting fears that advanced curmudgeonitis has evolved into something truly frightening: a tendency to think like the Prince of Wales.

It's generally accepted that Prince Charles is one of the more bizarre figures of our time.

He came to the world's attention as a grinning, honking schoolboy when he strolled into a pub and demanded a cherry brandy, apparently unaware that there was such a thing as the legal drinking age.

We watched in bafflement as he rejected his pretty young wife in favour of a leathery old boot who happened to be married to someone else.

We pinched ourselves in disbelief when he told said leathery old boot that he wanted to swap places with her tampon.

We concluded that he wasn't quite of this world and as we apparently have to have a monarch, the longer the current one sticks around, the better.

Wales' latest contribution to social discourse is his complaint that modern education gives people ideas above their station.

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays?" he wrote in a memo that surfaced at an employment tribunal hearing. "Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?"

The speaker at our 13-year-old's leavers' dinner was a sportsman who has served New Zealand with distinction both on and off the field. He told a few yarns about household names that had the audience eating out of his hand.

Then he decided to dispense some career advice. There was a lot of stuff about personal fulfilment and being the best you can be, but precious little about making a contribution.

"Follow your dreams," he told the boys. "You can be anything you want to be."

Most kids want to be rich, glamorous and famous; they want to be movie stars, rock stars, supermodels, professional athletes. These aren't realistic aspirations for the majority.

For a brief and terrible moment I found myself thinking and behaving like Prince Charles. I wondered why anyone would want to stuff these impressionable young heads with such pernicious nonsense. I glared at my wife as if it was somehow her fault.

In the movie Mad Dog and Glory, the Bill Murray character - a loan shark with pretensions to being a stand-up comedian - confides that his shrink keeps telling him that his problem is he's focused on recognition rather than achievement.

So are most 13-year-olds. So was this speech.

I realised that the speaker was just doing what most people in his position do: telling his audience what they want to hear.

I relaxed and had another glass of wine. I was okay - for now.