In Good Company: Ageing Symptoms
...A certain freedom of spirit does descend as one passes forty. If I want to escape for an hour or two in the evening with husband, our teenagers cope at home. I use the term with husband loosely, of course. He takes me out and I usually find him when it’s time to come home.,,
Enid Blackburn faced up to the ageing process in her usual cheerful way.
It did not occur to me at the age of 22, as I stood poised on the brink of motherhood, that one day my daughters and I would be sharing similar ageing symptoms. As it is, their teenage wails of ‘You don’t understand’ are entirely misdirected because I do – I do.
Am I not struggling with a difficult transition myself? They may be floundering from girl to womanhood but I am in the middle, reluctantly slipping from motherhood to what I fervently hope will be prolonged ‘just-being-a-wife-hood.’ What are their adolescent pimples compared with my indelible fans of creases? Once you start laughing you are forced to continue, to cover up the scars it leaves.
The young can pour over a whole exciting range of romantically designed fashion, while I am condemned to gaze despondently at the heartless belted pleats, or dated cape collars, destined to droop pathetically over prolapsed bosoms.
My teenagers plead for outfits exactly like their friends, while I lust after something totally different. Still I suppose there are not many 45-year-olds wearing faded grey cords with black Biro stains on back pocket. I achieved these delicate white stripes on my dark velvet shirt by inadvertently scooping it in with the whites. But I rebel against becoming a member of the twin-set and pearls society, I want to come to terms with middle-age, – but not yet.
One point I have gathered from 45 years of observation is that style, the ability to look good in anything, is a gift. But these head-turners have one common denominator that it pains me to admit – they are all slim.
At a bowling match last week I heard a daddy chide ‘Don’t shout at granny when she’s bowling.’ Granny was a handsome bronzed Athena in late fifties, with a striking bikini-type figure, which put us all off our meat teacakes. This was almost as challenging to a lapsed size 14 as the latest bloated photo of Liz Taylor. Why do some stay ageless while others shrivel up?
A certain freedom of spirit does descend as one passes forty. If I want to escape for an hour or two in the evening with husband, our teenagers cope at home. I use the term with husband loosely, of course. He takes me out and I usually find him when it’s time to come home.
Advancing years also bring a feeling of urgency – one has still so much to accomplish before the curtain falls. I’d love to do something really startling, like turn up for a bowling match wearing false eyelashes, or walk into the ‘Examiner’ readers department with dyed vermilion hair.
When Times columnist Molly Parkin was 40 and grey she decided on green hair. She was in ‘an emerald field along the Cornish coast’ to quote her book Good Golly Miss Molly, but it was only fully appreciated by babies she said.
I did once return from the hairdressers with unplanned bleached tips. She had some lotion left and I was early. But my striped hair – family name for it - turned a ghastly khaki, which took months to wear out.
I have goals I hanker after: to be able to say one Friday, ‘I’ve done,’ meaning the housework, including windows and baking is actually completed, to write a book, to take an American Greyhound tourist bus around the movie stars homes. I’d like to be able to furnish our home with furniture we like, not what we can afford. One day I want to visit my children and their families and be told ‘Sit down, mum, I’ll wash up,’ and many more unfulfilled desires that would only scorch the paper.
In the meantime I’m looking forward to the day when this corselet, which fits like a tourniquet, will hang in folds around my middle or I’ll settle for a shout of ‘Well bowled,’ from my team mates instead of ‘Rubbish!’
