Stuck in the Middle

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Reverend Hawker points out that this is an absurdity: the people of the Middle Ages, not knowing when the Middle Ages were going to end, couldn’t have known when they’d reached the middle.

But Algernon is quick to reply that this doesn’t stop people nowadays having their mid-life crises unfailingly between the ages of 40 and 50 despite not knowing the dates of their own demise (thereby revealing a certain optimism);

Whereas Algernon, always wanting to be on the safe side, has been having a mid-life crisis on a yearly basis since the age of 15.