In Good Company: Coo-er!
Enid Blackburn tells of fighting the anonomity of middle age.
In her beautifully British classic country tweeds Penelope Keith definitely looks to the manor born. Wearing those exquisitely cut silk blouses and the smooth fitting wool skirts she might have slipped straight from the glossy pages of ‘Country Life.’
I bought a similar outfit recently – a pure wool wrap-over skirt and a tie-front silk shirt, the best of British. I wanted to look tall, slim and smart – a sophisticated pastiche of the elegant Miss Keith.
Granted my shorter legs are a different shape, there is a gap in our ages and I may be a heavier model, but why do I still look like Whistler’s mother? Why can’t I slip meekly into middle age? Though not like writer Doris Lessing, who describes it like this, ‘And then not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you, you achieve a wonderful freedom, it is a positive thing you can move about unnoticed and invisible.’
Could anything sound more depressing? When I start feeling unnoticed and invisible I usually go out and buy a new outfit. The wrap-over skirt certainly provided a new image and a wonderful – if draughty – sense of freedom.
When I tried it on in the shop, it was quite well behaved. The giant beanstalk assistant stopped trying to sell me the lettuce leaf Indian cotton, which looked as if it needed watering anyway, when she saw me in the skirt. She smiled down approvingly from the skylight and clinched the sale when she confessed I looked taller.
That night I wore it and felt my first burst of freedom when I bent to fasten my shoes and my knees slipped out to greet me.
I practised a few more disgusting poses in front of the wardrobe mirror, by simply pushing one knee forward the two skirt fronts fell majestically apart. Another step and my elastic was showing – a brand new image was unfolding before me. When I dashed down the stairs, my two skirt fronts billowing behind, my husband raised his eyebrows, but he was looking at his watch. When I climbed into the car beside him with only my tights visible, he did become slightly neurotic, but luckily there were no coppers about to arrest me.
During the evening at least half a dozen respectables tactfully pointed out the gap in my front. ‘Be careful when you dance, it looks shocking.’ One masculine remark for which I shall be eternally grateful, went something like ‘coo-er’
Much later when confidence was in full flow and we were all dancing like candidates for a ‘Hot Gossip’ contest, I suddenly realised my partner, a young husband kindly on loan, was not trying out a new finger pointing, nervous twitching routine, he was trying to attract my attention and seemed anxious about my blouse front. I checked but it looked OK.
‘Quick!’ he whispered frantically ‘fasten your top buttons.’ I think I would have been less offended had he asked me to undo them! Decidedly, middle-age is stabbing me in the chest. But I intend to fight it – noticeably!
