Turning 50 isn’t the big, shiny reinvention everyone makes it out to be. You don’t wake up on the morning of your birthday suddenly wiser, richer, or with fewer wrinkles — the dishwasher still needs emptying and the dog still needs walking.

But looking back on half a century of living (that’s five whole decades, folks), I realised life isn’t really lived in neat 10-year slices. All the chapters vary in length and lesson.

In this episode, I take you on a whistle-stop tour through my own ordinary-extraordinary 50 years — because birthdays aren’t deadlines for who you should be by now — they’re milestones to celebrate how far you’ve come.