Willy Trolove: Thirty-somethings fielding on boundary of middle age

I am in my 30s. It is a strange age. I am too old to be called young and too young to be called old. You could say that I'm on the boundary of middle age.

People in their 30s are terrified of admitting they might very nearly, just about, be almost middle-aged. Admitting you are middle-aged means admitting that one day you will be old. And this means that, before you know it, you'll have to chase away hooligans on your mobility scooter, remember to put in your false teeth when a neighbour drops around some rhubarb chutney, and look forward to the six o'clock news just in case that nice Mr Peters is on again.

But refusing to admit something doesn't stop it being true.

If you make grunting noises when you get up from the sofa, you are middle-aged. If you spend hours looking for things because you can't remember where you put them a few moments beforehand, you are middle-aged. And if you fall asleep in front of the telly at 8 in the evening, you are irreversibly, irrevocably, indisputably middle-aged.

You may still feel like a 16-year-old on the inside. But try talking to real 16-year-olds and you'll soon realise that you have no idea what they are on about. Youths, adolescents, younger persons (whatever they are called nowadays) are five zillion times more sophisticated and complicated than you were at their age.

Just two decades ago, teenagers were ignored by the rest of society. We occupied that useless stage of metamorphosis between children, who are innocent and full of promise, and young adults, who are, at least, of minor economic use, especially in the fruit-packing industry.

The only thing we were good at was mooching, looking goofy, spilling things when we got excited, and, from time to time, having tennis balls jammed into our mouths.

But today's teenagers are trendsetters and fashion leaders. They are the influential demographic, whatever that is. They may not have much in the way of manners, social skills or critical faculties but society worships them as the ideal.

Every second television programme and advertisement is aimed at their banal world. Everyone wants to look like they do. Everybody wants to be them.

Young, happy, healthy, horny youths sell us clothes, cars, stereos and holidays, even though it's mostly people who are old, grumpy, unhealthy and have, at best, intermittent sex lives who can afford to buy them.

So it's no wonder that those of us in our 30s refuse to admit we're no longer young. We go to great lengths to pretend we are not concerned about our age. "It's all in the mind," we say, or "you're only as old as you think you are", or "I don't feel a day over 21".

But these are lies. And they're not the small, irrelevant little parking-fine lies that you can flick under the carpet. They're the ruddy great, hoary, monster-sized lies that lurk in your cupboard munching on your best frocks and slobbering on your sandshoes.

Ageing is not in the mind. Pretending you are younger than you are doesn't work. And if you don't feel a day older than 21, it's only because you're 20. Or you're drunk.

Try taking part in any outdoor activity that you effortlessly engaged in when young and the lie will emerge from the cupboard, belching, urinating, and showing off its warts. Outdoor activity is what separates the young from the middle-aged.

Take jazzercise, beach volleyball or alfresco sex, all of which, it could be argued, are variations on the same theme. When you were young, you could indulge in these activities without consequences. But in middle age they require a trip to the physio and a course of osteopathy afterwards.

I know this because a few months ago when the sun was shining, someone who should have known better suggested a game of backyard cricket. Before you could say Geoff Howarth, several thirty-somethings were springing around the lawn like young gazelles, throwing themselves after a cricket ball.

Adam, the batsman, hit a perfect off-drive. I leapt to intercept, bent down to pick up the ball, and, with all the grace and poise of a concrete truck on an ice rink, trod on it.

It's only now, 12 weeks on, after several courses of treatment from various back specialists, that the pain has gone and I can walk properly again.

Of course, you could argue that if a young person trod on the ball, he or she would have suffered the same painful consequences. But there's the rub.

In all my years as a young person I never once trod on a cricket ball. You tread on cricket balls only when you are fielding on the boundary of middle age.