I met a photographer for the first time today.

‘Nice chap. He’s 55.

We chatted about age because he’d been poorly recently and we contextualised it with how old we both were.

Playing out.

Anyhow, my new friend referenced an old friend. He chatted about how nice a recent reacquaintance had been.

The two guys had known each other all their lives.

So long in fact that, when they were very young – they used to ‘play out’ together.

Warm.

I like that phrase… ‘playing out’.

It made me feel warm.

(I bet you smile, inside or outside when you say it silently to yourself. Go on. ‘Playing out.’)

I used to play out in the seventies and very early eighties.

Then, in about 1982 when I was 14, ‘playing out’ turned into something else.

Up until then playing really was playing. After 14 there were new agenda.

Girls. Fighting. Muscles. Pubes. Haircuts. Money. Bullying. Cliques. Clothes. Oh, and girls. Did I mention girls?

These Days.

These days, I crave the warmth of ‘playing out’ that had been so spontaneous and wondrous and free-flowing back then.

And, you know what, at 50 I feel more able than ever to get that warmth back.

All I have to do is to think less.

To go out and to be in that moment.

To not worry about what other people think.

To relax.

To forget.

So, if anyone fancies playing out – let me know.

I get my spends at the end of the month.

I’ll buy you a Wagon Wheel.

These two gentlemen are both highly respected for what they do professionally. 

Phil is a Producer / Director type.

Carlo founded and leads a property development brand. And he co-founded The Do Lectures.

Mucking About.

It has however come to my attention that, alongside these positions of responsibility (and I think that this photograph goes some way towards supporting my claim) they spend time ‘mucking about’.

It’s a disgrace.

When I was about 20 I imagined that 50(ish) old men should not be doing this kind of thing.

Rather, they should be reading the broadsheets in their sheds, watering plants and working out whether PEPs were better than ISAs or ISAs are better than PEPs.

The Baker Boy caps they are both wearing (blatant plug coming up) are as classic as they are cool.

They are from Always Wear Red.

Do I want the brand that I created associating with men that somehow manage to join the dots between  leading their profession, having a giggle and looking cool? All at the same time?

Yes.

I do.

I have some good news for you today. 

It is:

There is no direct correlation between how cool you are and how old you are.

Most significantly, it is not true that the older you get the less cool you get.

In fact – if you do it right – you get cooler as you get older.

Classic cool.

I am in dangerous territory now.

The wrong kind of 50 year old guy using words like ‘cool’ or ‘disco’ is a terrible thing.

But I just wanted to point out that the coolness of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Marvin Gaye is ageless.

And timeless.

So if you’re knocking on a bit, all is not lost.

Classic cool is the best kind of cool.

These days, most ‘cool’ is manufactured.

Vacuous.

Unauthentic.

So take a look at the images that go with this post at 50odd.co.uk.

And channel what they’ve got.

Most of them are sadly no longer with us. So they don’t need their ‘cool’ any more anyway.

Good luck.

You may have seen this. 

Gary Vaynerchuk is not everyone’s cup of tea.

But I do think he has a point here.

This video is 50 seconds long.

You may have to pop to www.50odd.co.uk to watch it if you are reading this as an emailed story.

Thank you.

I go face-to-face with a personal trainer three times a week. Each time, it’s 1 hour.

I’m 50.

And I will be in the best shape of my adult life in about a year from now.

6 days. 

The only way I was going make this happen was to do one magical thing. I’ll mention what that magical thing was at the end.

But before I do, I wanted to point something out.

The maths bit.

1 hour, 3 days per week is 3 hours per week.

12 hours per month.

144 hours per year.

Or 6 (24 hour) days.

Under 2% of my year, to get to the shape I want to be.

Magical.

I am not sure exactly how I’ll change shape of course.

But I will keep to the schedule.

And here’s the magical thing I mentioned earlier, the thing I did that makes me go face-to-face with a personal trainer 3 times each week.

I decided to.

That’s it.