Cerys Matthews: songs to make hitting 50 seem not so bad

I am fast approaching the big 5-0, and I feel sick about it. I’m trying to be cheerful, though, so what songs might help me with this transition?
The Doctor is writing this prescription on a train from Dorchester South to London. At Bournemouth, the carriage filled up with the semi-naked youngsters of the hashtag generation, with crooked plastic eyelashes, straining bra straps and smooth, dewy skin. I feel as remote from them as I did the demented brown tufted capuchin I saw last week at the zoo. These blooming adolescents are exotic creatures: preening, chattering, smartphone clacking vessels of life. But there’s no going back. This conveyor belt can’t stop.

You could try and join these muffin-topped revolutionaries (all hail Madonna), but really, life’s too short. Best cover up the worst bits, enjoy the dip in oestrogen (which apparently makes you less inclined to nurture – ie more time for your own projects) and plough forwards into your prime. Yes, prime, for your mind. Rejoice in the very thing these youths are missing: hard-earned wisdom.

My advice is to dive into the classics. Pack a picnic, a great bottle of French red, a mobile record player and flounce into the woods singing Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien. Read Emmeline Pankhurst’s My Own Story (what resolve! and through her 50s...), put A Feather On The Breath Of God on the deck with Emma Kirkby’s ringing soprano, and marvel at the composer Abbess Hildegard Von Bingen, whose main life’s work started at 40, but whose achievements ensure that she is still in our minds almost 1,000 years later. She was a medic, botanist, mystic, visionary, playwright and poet. Finish the day with Ornette Coleman’s The Shape Of Jazz To Come – at 50, you’re young enough to get it.