The summer I turned 40

A coming-of-age drama in which I am capering and L-I-V-I-N'.

Aug 09, 2026

𓂃🖊 It happened slowly then all at once. I stretched out being 39 for as long as I could, not to delay the inevitable but because it felt worth marking.

Aged 39 and a half, back in January, I learned that the man I’d been orbiting for the past six or so years had been cheating on me for probably the whole time.

I spent the winter and spring trying to keep afloat and managed very well. When the first days of summer hit I began to feel something erupting inside, like an unstoppable wave. It was telling me: mark these last days. As if when the clock struck midnight on the day of my 40th birthday, I would turn into a pumpkin.

But there is something to be said for feeling like my 30s were taken from me. It’s not as simple as that, of course. Because there were good times with my ex and he taught me a lot, or the relationship taught me a lot. But there was also a pandemic that drove me certifiably insane (you too?). So, I don’t know, it just felt like I had a lot of years of strangeness and the last days of my 30s should be memorable.

So they were. And they coincided with the World Cup, providing some kind of release that is hard to explain but can probably be simply described as capers. The dictionary tells me to caper means “to run and jump about in an energetic, happy way”. I remember as a child my grandma lightly telling me off when I was in a silly mood. “Stop yer capering,” she’d say.

But I couldn’t help it! If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s frivolously skipping around, giggling and talking nonsense. It is not the stuff of proper adulting and that’s what makes it so good.

I struggled to sit down for five minutes. At times I was literally running around on the warm Berlin pavements after midnight bursting into loud laughter. I was all over Neukölln watching the World Cup matches at odd hours, screaming at the telly in smoke-filled pubs and chatting with strangers.

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My friend Claire, who I’ve known my whole life, read the room. I think she had a similar feeling about the summer because the holidays are her holy grail as a teacher. After arriving in Berlin for a spontaneous weekend in the last week of July she said: “This is the circus, everybody’s trying not to go home” – a line from the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous, when the guitarist Russell Hammond is describing what it’s like to tour. Summer must keep going, was the order of the day.

When I was in Scotland for a couple of weeks earlier in July, Claire had me on a strictly fun activity schedule. We were tearing around the north east, driving out to a small village called Collieston for a swim. It was my first time in the North Sea. “FUCKING HELLLLL IT’S COOOOOLD” I screamed over and over again as I submerged into the water, trying to catch my breath.

We drove inland and climbed a hill, sitting on the top of a big rock at the peak, munching on tofu and kimchi sandwiches and drinking cans of Coke Zero. I wondered how old the rock was. We surveyed the landscape, it was the clearest day known to man. We watched a bird of prey soar high above us in the sky and ate apples.

We got matching tattoos. After much debate we settled on cassette tapes in a nod to our music-obsessed childhood that began with a compilation of ‘50s songs called Lipstick on Your Collar. We watched bands rock out in an all-dayer in a social club in Aberdeen city centre. The audience was young and old, and everything in between.

We kept quoting lines from the Richard Linklater ‘90s movie Dazed and Confused about a group of teenagers in 1976 celebrating the last day of high school. “Alright, Alright, Alright!” we said, quoting our favourite character David Wooderson, the guy who can’t let go of high school, played by Matthew McConaughey.

Scenes from the summer I turned 40. Photos: Rachel Loxton

The weather matched my mood: blazing sunshine on most days. Quite unbelievable for Scotland. I enjoyed hanging out with my parents, helping them put together a pre-birthday BBQ. My mum looked out lots of photos. I loved seeing the ones of me and my sister when we were wee; in the bath, on a hill, hanging out.

I hurried home to watch Norway take on England with my dad and cheer for Erling Haaland. Although to my parents’ surprise, I brought my screaming in Berlin pubs habit to the living room in Aberdeen.

“Rachel watches the football very loudly,” I heard my mum tell my sister on the phone.

“I’m happy,” I shouted to her, and I was. Clapping away on the sofa saying “I support football” for a laugh. And by the way, that Argentina vs England game – you know the one… well my mum was also very loud!

I went to Glasgow to meet my friend Sooz and we ate Mexican food and pizza, drank prosecco, giggled and cried. We went to the Barras market and the Barbie exhibition at the Kelvingrove Museum. On Saturday night a drunk guy could not accept that we were Scottish. “You’re German,” he said. We found it extremely funny.

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Back in Berlin, my friend Tom and I hosted a Scotland-themed joint birthday party that I declared “one for the history books”. I cheered on my talented friends as they performed karaoke and we did a Bohemian Rhapsody singalong. Tom said a gorgeous poem about friendship. I plucked up the courage near the end of the night, sweat dripping down my face, to give a speech in which I essentially said: fuck this world, everyone should be kinder and also: fuck my ex boyfriend.

The summer has not yet ended but my frenzied July has. We are falling into the other side now.

I have been thinking about everything this summer brought: sleepovers with friends, feeling like we were 12 again. Howling with laughter. A fling that was as sweet as a Fab ice lolly and melted away just as fast. Trauma dumping with pals.

Closeness with family. Holding my 10-year-old nephew’s hand for a moment as he sat in the back of the car when my dad and I dropped him off at his adventure camp. For a few brief seconds he wasn’t too cool for that and I treasure it. Pulling back my niece’s hair into a half ponytail like Erling Haaland for her football camp.

Delightfully acquiring a new fridge/freezer from my neighbours who moved out. I haven’t had a freezer for months so I have packed it with ice creams that I enjoy on the hot, humid days in Berlin.

I have found myself apologising to people for not getting much done, for not writing, for not keeping on top of admin. “I’ve been living,” I say.

It made me think once again of the loveable David Wooderson in Dazed and Confused.

“The older you do get, the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow,” Wooderson tells the graduating high-schoolers. “You just gotta keep livin’ man, L-I-V-I-N.”

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