Young lady

 

Oh. 

I've reached that age.

I opened the door to the delivery driver, he was very youthful but had the air of a 'young fogey' about him. I like that term - think I first heard it on 'The Big Breakfast', if you remember that Channel Four show from years ago, where there was a regular slot featuring guests whose ages and interests were somewhat at odds with each other. Like, say, a 17-year old who was into George Formby, or a pre-adolescent in a bow tie who collected old clocks.  Anyway, Delivery Boy Man was bright-eyed and  gangly but his thick-rimmed glasses, unruly ginger beard and benign face gave the impression of being a little on the nerdy ticket, and his smiley, respectful demeanour as I greeted him were most endearing.

Then in a chirpy, old-fashioned Cockney bus driver sort of manner he said, as he handed over my parcel (remember, he was only about twenty):

"Here you are, young lady!"

Young lady!  Which, because I am clearly not a young lady and no amount of moisturising could ever give the impression that I am to one of such tender years, means only one thing: old lady.  I have to confess, my heart sank a bit.  I've reached the age when a person at least forty years my junior refers to me in this way precisely because he's thinking the opposite.*   Isn't that weird? But you know it's true! 

Mind you, reflecting on it later, I realised that it would have felt far, far worse, in fact I would be slowly dying inside, had he said, "Here you are, old lady!"  I should just be grateful for small mercies.  

 X Ray Spex: Age (if only it were all the rage...)

* Quick, important caveat: totally different if it's a friend, or someone of similar/senior age saying it, then as a tongue-in-cheek token of affection it's rather nice...

Daylight robbery

I don’t know whether we look more like ageing beatnik chicks or Mafia wives, all of us dressed in black and with chic boots and dark glasses.  One friend wearing a smartly tailored coat, the other with her nails immaculately polished, me with crimson painted lips.  We make our way to an old building at the end of town - coincidentally the same place we’d convened many times long ago - in fact, over forty years back.  It was once the venue where, with wide-eyed adolescent adulation, we'd watched Siouxsie & The Banshees perform before they’d even got a record deal and where we’d seen Adam & The Antz many months prior to the release of ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ (oh, how to make yourself feel ancient!)  Also where the Newtown Neurotics and Crass became our local heroes.  I could go on.  But it's certainly a building full of ghosts from our past, and I half expect to see a gaggle of punks around each corner and to delve into my handbag for Polos to hide the smell of forbidden cigarettes from my parents.  Ah, there are parts of me which would go back to that time in a heartbeat; I’d skip the teenage angst and the school night curfews, but…yes, the gigs!

Anyway, here we are at our old stomping ground (no longer that music venue and arts centre), three women in our late fifties, about to embark on something completely new.  That’s one of the things about getting older, isn’t it?  That there are fewer and fewer ‘first times’.  But this experience is still uncharted territory; it’s definitely the first time any of us has robbed a bank…

An hour later, as orange lights flash and alarms sound around us, we are sitting in the back of a transit van, leaving behind us a trail of gold bars, magnetic keys, bank cards and a gun.  Oops, did I say gun?  I do of course mean a grabber stick.  We’ve ordered a pizza for a security guard and laced it with laxative so that he’s waylaid in the loo.  We’ve hidden in cupboards, hacked a computer and fiddled with frustrating padlocks.  There was that moment when each of us tried to turn one of those number locks by torchlight, on the underside of a table it was, too - but the glare was too much for our glasses…that’s the problem with varifocals, I find.   I must bear that in mind should I ever want to pull off another heist.  Still, in spite of that somehow we’re not quite yet too old for this malarkey, because it’s undoubtedly one of the daftest, silliest things I’ve done in a long while and the laughter along with our bank-robbing ineptitude will remain with me for some time.

Of course no security guard was harmed in the process and the gold bullion was made of wood, but as far as those ‘first times’ go, my first ‘Escape Room’ experience was a good one... 

Well, it had to be this!

Grey area

Soapbox time!

A friend of mine went to her school reunion recently.  “You know it was so funny to see that all the men with hair there had gone grey,” she said, “...but none of the women had!”  

They say that grey hair adds six years to a woman’s age. Gee, thanks for that, just what we need for our confidence when we're already going through you know what.

Of course that's perpetuated when so many use artificial hair colour.  Imagine if everyone who covers up their grey hair stopped doing so, then this ‘six years older’ thing would be meaningless.  It’d be no big deal as, by the time we reach our mid-fifties, most people have gone at least 50% grey anyway.

However, as every modern woman knows, it’s against the rules to show your age.  

For example, you rarely see a middle-aged female TV presenter with grey/white hair, compared to their many male counterparts for whom it doesn't seem to be a problem.  (Gets me all feminist, this...)  The pressure on women in the media to stay looking younger is colossal and, ridiculously, it seems their jobs can depend on it  - but that's a whole topic for another time and place.

Although, seeing as I've brought it up...

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

See what I mean?

Anyway, in the meantime, I'm taking a stand.

White hair is nothing new to me; since late childhood I’ve had one small patch of it – a ‘Mallen Streak'.*

The 'Mallen' Streak, as later sported by Dave Vanian

and more naturally by the Millibands

It's not that much but I hated it.  I remember the time a couple of mean girls at school shouted, “Ugh! You’re going grey!”  and, as a sensitive 13-year old, this felt mortifying. So bleaching the whole of my hair and adding unrealistic colours through the punk/post-punk era conveniently disguised it as well and I loved what I could do with all those nasty smelling chemicals.  It's ages since I've used peroxide or Crazy Colour  – but still I've spent years tinting that stubborn white stripe (I should call it Jack) to blend in with the rest.

This year the long, sunny Summer bleached my dishwater blonde and the freaky white bit didn’t show up as much so I left it.  But now, as my Winter coat grows, it's more obvious, and suddenly so are plenty of other new white hairs joining it.  I'm going grey.  Just as you'd expect at my age.

So I could reach for some Nice'n'Easy now and be ruled by an endless regime of dyeing and touching up roots.  Or I could just think, you know what, fuck it.   Doesn’t mean I've given up caring about appearance - just that I’m still me, whatever.  If it's against the rules to show your age, what are rules for if not to be challenged and rebelled against?  Why should visible signs of maturity be so negative for women?  (I think men still look great with grey hair... or no hair... and all stages between!)

I may cave in, especially if I get talked down to like a little old lady, whereupon I'll be tempted to do all manner of unspeakable things with the pointy end of an umbrella, and then reach for the bottle (of 103A Medium Blonde). 

For now, though, I'm finding it oddly liberating and have decided, in defiance of both sexism and ageism, to embrace it.  So there!

Exhibit C

* Apparently it's 'Poliosis', a genetic condition where there is an absence of melanin in head hair, eyebrows or eyelashes.

Fifty-twee

 “More parsnips than I know what to do with!” laughed the man as he showed off his basket of home-grown vegetables.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, except….  

Except….

EXCEPT…

… “It’s all so twee!” I found myself saying.

Honestly, I think I said it out loud on my own in the room. The reason being the man with his too many parsnips was in a TV advert for over 50s life insurance and that meant it was aimed at....(braces self)....me.  And maybe you too, either you now or the person you’ll be in just a few years’ time. 

I should add, it wasn't really the parsnips.  It was everything.  It was these advertisers' convenient vision of the over-50s – all pelmets and trugs and an oh-so-gentle sense of humour.   All tweed, velcro and lacy doilies. I felt so patronised!  I can’t bear being patronised and, oh god, I know it’s only going to get worse.  Fuck it. 

I’ve nothing against growing parsnips, just so you know.  You’re very welcome to show me your parsnips or any other homegrown root vegetables for that matter.  In a trug.  And I know all ads for any demographic are horribly generalised and broad, whether you're a teenager or a woman or a cat-lover or whatever, but it seems that the stereotypes for ‘older’ people simply haven’t been adjusted in decades.  They're more like a vision from the '50s than a vision of our 50s.  It’s as if once you pass 49 you instantly become some sort of sub-species, inoffensive and chintzy and dressed only in beige.  

These are not people like my peers and me - people who still go to gigs, or who like wearing pointy shoes, or who still have their old Joy Division albums in a dusty box in a room with an Andy Warhol poster on the wall, etc.  Insert your own version here.

(Note to advertiser: those parsnips can be inserted elsewhere.)

Help the aged

I was at the dentists yesterday, waiting to check in at Reception. The customer in front of me had to fill in some forms and the Receptionist was carefully explaining what she had to do. In a very high voice, one of those voices which contains a pre-recorded smile, she slowly spelled it out: “Now, you need to read this through, yes? - do you have your glasses? - ok, and then you need to write your name in this box here, you see this box at the bottom here, yes? And then you take it with you and give it to ...” etc, etc. and of course I wasn't surprised to see that the person she was speaking to as if they were four years old was more like 80. I shivered, not at the prospect of opening wide and dribbling in front of my lovely Iranian dentist, but at a possible future I – and you, my dear friends! – may face. Being talked to like a baby. Oh no!

The old lady, who seemed perfectly compos mentis, duly toddled off with her form and the Receptionist cast an aww-bless type of glance in my direction. I know she was well-meaning, patient and kind, and I'm sure the same traits will apply to the mere whippersnappers upgrading my new remote-controlled Google hip joints in the years to come, years that are not quite as far away as I'd like. I realise the world will no doubt seem faster and madder and even more confusing but I still don't think that, assuming I'm in sound mind, I'll want to be spoken to in a manner which insinuates that the best things in mine might be playdough and piggy-back rides.  On the other hand, perhaps that's best? Perhaps you just have to act it up a bit, swallow what pride you have (left), leave your hearing aid at home deliberately and let everyone treat you like a toddler on Calpol. Then go home and have the last laugh...?  I don't know.

Reunion

So Debbie Harry and Dolly Parton were both 68 when they played Glastonbury at the weekend! In fact Debbie's birthday is today so she's now 69 - can you believe it? - I always remember her birthday because it's the day before mine.  Anyway, did you see them on stage? I was sadly disappointed by Blondie... and experienced the opposite from Dolly. I couldn't have predicted that.

Neither could I have predicted even a few days ago quite how it would feel to meet up with someone whom I haven't seen for thirty-two years.  Thirty-two years! The last occasion we even clapped eyes on each other was when we were just 19, the day we walked out of that Graphics studio at college for the very last time. I don't even remember saying “goodbye”. Partings then didn't seem like partings, perhaps that's an age thing (I'm not talking about hair...)

We live at opposite ends of the country now but on Friday a rare opportunity allowed us to reunite for a long pub lunch.  It's quite a weird thing to see someone after that kind of gap and it was absolutely brilliant. Now, with both of us hurtling towards our 51^st birthdays, I reckon we've turned out fine. Supping a pint of Guinness in the sunshine and chatting freely for hours I could still see the boy he was in college days, and perhaps he could still see the girl I was - but it's even better now... easy... we're settled and confident and positive and mellow (though not too mellow) and... old! And – here's another thing I couldn't have predicted: I'm liking being this age (and 68 still seems a long way off but if Debbie and Dolly can do it....)

(If you just happen to be reading this... after you mentioned Salad Days (a song which I had totally forgotten) by Young Marble Giants from our college era when we inhaled as much spray mount as we did cigarette smoke, I came home and reminded myself of it and it seems so very apt.   If college days were our salad days, now we're in our apple pie and custard days.  Here it is.)

Old age and the war

Carole, my lovely French tutor, expressed her surprise recently at the degree to which Brits still go on about 'the war'. It's just not the same in France apparently, not a subject that takes much precedence. I'm sure there are some theories as to why the French feel that way which I don't feel qualified to discuss, but I don't really get why we still have such a preoccupation with it here.

It's become a source of ridicule in some ways, like when Uncle Albert of Only Fools and Horses was always trotting out his famous line of, “During the wa-ahr...” I never used to think about what people actually must have gone through; I'd switch off, it seemed so long ago and irrelevant, boring even. And I'd wonder why some discussed their wartime experiences with a nostalgic relish, as if they were good times, as if they were times to look back on fondly! But I think I get it more now. Those moments of extreme adversity, endured and survived individually and communally, are a big deal. Most of us ordinary (younger) civilians haven't a clue.

I have to remind myself of that when I'm frustrated by the old dears in the charity shop bumbling around and getting in the way of the box of CDs (or knitting patterns) on the floor, and when I'm stuck behind the elderly chap in the supermarket queue who can't find his reading glasses or the right change. It's so easy to disregard older people for all the obvious reasons, isn't it? Especially the ones who can't help talking shite. We've all been there I'm sure, stuck listening endlessly and patiently to someone who tells you the minutiae of their dull daily routine because they just want someone to chat to, but whose lonely desperation to talk has unfortunately become the very reason why people avoid them, and thus that lonely desperation cycle continues.  I know it could be me one day, struggling to get to grips with my Google Glass and ducking out the way of Amazon drones.  But who knows what they've been through, what they've seen, how they coped? None of it through choice.

I was reminded of this the other day on finding a letter from 30 years ago written by my mum to an ex-teacher from her school who had serendipitously gone into the bookshop where she worked at the time. In it she explained about her first days at secondary school where she started in 1939, amid pupils from several other schools who hadn't been evacuated.

“...It was a trying time as we spent a great part of the day in the sand-bagged cloisters of the school building trying to learn normal lessons with air-raids in progress...

… In 1943 we were still experiencing bombing raids and I have a very strong memory of the day we received news of the death of our classmate, Pauline Egglesfield, who had been suffocated in the ruins of her home in Ilford. I also remember returning home one afternoon and as I neared the long avenue which led to my house I could see a dark plume of smoke. I flew home, that long mile, to discover that incendiaries had destroyed a nearby farm. Ilford received the highest percentage of doodle-bug damage, being at the range where most of the dreaded flying bombs eventually blew up”

Still, it wasn't all about the bombs:

“...Uniforms were available but had to be bought with clothing coupons. I remember going to a very old fashioned drapers store to select the gym tunic. Mother would make the square-necked blouses and summer dresses. But, oh! The terrible little hats. This last creation was jammed down flat on my head nearly over my eyes. Eventually the girls managed to rearrange these little cloth affairs in a more flattering shape – but I almost ran away when I discovered they had to be worn at all times travelling back and forth to school.”

Glad to see my mum had the same thoughts about school uniform as I did.

Radiohead: Bones (not The Bends!)

I'm not usually a big fan of Radiohead, but this.... I think it's stunning.

Dear John

I caught a discussion on BBC Breakfast yesterday about the price of show tickets. Never mind the second mortgage needed to see the Monty Python reunion, it was guest John Robb, the writer, journalist and musician, who held my attention. Here's a man in his early fifties, with a distinctly severe haircut,  in a jacket just as sharp, open neck black shirt and big-buckled creepers... and he looks great. You can see he's getting older (as we all are) - he's more lined with a heavier brow and a little rough around the edges.  That's fine, it suits him.

I don't subscribe to the idea of being an old punk; those days are over and, the way I see it, they were meant to be short-lived.  Can't see the point in trying to look exactly the same as I did decades ago - apart from anything else it seems to lack imagination. However, I love to see someone getting older without completely losing their edge, and I reckon John's doing that.

It's about how you age, isn't it?  It inevitably brings more creases, but that doesn't mean you stop ironing them out of your clothes. You don't have to start wearing shapeless trousers and beige anoraks, unless you really want to, of course. Not every man could (or would like to) carry off the John Robb look, I'm sure, but I'm so glad someone can!

And, personally, I love to see a few age lines on a man's face.

'We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.'

George Bernard Shaw

Where's my robot?

A ‘significant’ birthday looms this week – ooh!  I can’t quite get my head around the idea of being this old.  I’d somehow assumed that by now I’d know all the answers and feel responsible and capable at everything, and I don’t. 

Thinking about it reminds me of a primary school lesson when we talked about life in the future, specifically the year 2000.  Back then, in the early '70s, it seemed so far away and so momentous a date.  I thought about how old I’d be  – 37 (ancient!) – and presumed I’d be a different person, i.e. not just a more mature version of who I already was, somehow. I’d be sorted, complete, a proper grown-up.  Life would be less ‘complicated’.  Ha!

The class discussion concluded that the future would be easier for everyone.  The main belief was that there’d be robots, of course, to do all the boring chores. Nobody would have to do anything they didn’t want to do.  Actually, nobody would have to do anything, because in our futuristic robotic Utopia our one ambition was to have as much leisure as possible. Mind you, I don’t recall any suggestions about how we’d really use all that free time (apart from day-trips to the moon when we craved a change of atmosphere). We certainly wouldn’t be spending time eating and drinking, because all nutrition would come in pill-form.  Two tablets three times a day would provide all dietary needs - so convenient!  And quite how this lifestyle would be funded, I’ve no idea, because no-one went to work  – except for the robot programmers, I guess.

Funny how, in 2013, everything I used to think of as futuristic now just seems so old-fashioned and retro.  Including me at 50.

All together now

I try not to think about the future very much.  I’ve got to be honest, I find it a little scary and it’s a fairly pointless thing to get depressed about because there’s nothing I can do about its imminent arrival.  Every now and then, though, I catch a glimpse of my mum when I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and I realise that I really am quite old.  And getting older. 

One of the things that worries me slightly, if I let it, is the thought of spending any of my geriatric years in a care home.  It’s not the idea of a residential institution itself that bothers me the most, it’s the concept of being in the enforced company of others with whom I wouldn’t normally choose to spend any time.  Being permanently around people whose interests and attitudes are very different from mine I would struggle to just be myself.

Who might there be to chat to about obscure music?  About the youth cults of our formative years?  About similar comedy, books, art and films?  What if everybody else reads The Sun and wants to talk about Queen Kate’s latest dress and how they don’t like foreigners?  I don’t want to find myself swooning with incomparable delight because someone’s offered me a chocolate digestive (‘New recipe! Extra creamy chocolate!’), I want to be able to feel excited at something a little more edgy.   I don’t want to talk about the way the wallpaper matches the carpet oh so nicely, or how much Mrs Donnelly’s granddaughter’s new baby weighs.  I want to talk about how amazing spiders are, or what people thought about Bill Hicks, or why Never Mind The Bollocks still sounds good….

Which leads me to… what will the sing-songs and arthritic knees ups (knees-not-ups?) of our future be like?  There won’t be any "Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag”s or “My old man said follow the van”s any more, will there?  What will our generation be warbling away to in weary unison as an overworked assistant brings the tea and biscuits in before our afternoon nap?  Now that’s the bit that’s really getting to me. What if everyone wants to sing ‘The Lady In Red’ or ‘Wonderful Tonight’?  I don’t think I could take it.   So… do you reckon we could make a little deal, lovely readers?  If we all end up in a care home somewhere some day, can we make sure it’s the same one?

My favourite rendition of a favourite Smiths song.

I want to be like Doris.

Younger than yesterday

(Yes, my dad is wearing socks with sandals...)

I never thought I’d be able to say that I have anything in common with Lindsay Lohan but it turns out that there is just one thing.  And it’s today!

Birthdays are inclined to make you think about the ageing process and – as you can see - this one is no exception, but the word ‘ageing’ has such negative connotations and I really want to say something positive about it.  It’s a shame that modern western society seems to have a bit of a downer on getting old.  It’s brilliant to be young, oh yeah, and I’m very happy for those who still are.  But that doesn’t mean that it’s therefore bad not to be!  Many ancient cultures encouraged an attitude of pride towards being an ‘elder’, and perhaps some indigenous groups still do.  Sometimes I look around at much older people and feel myself almost automatically discounting them – it’s awful and I don’t mean to but I assume it’s just the way we’re programmed to think – then I remind myself of all the folks who have done (or are still doing) amazing, inspiring things and who are now, ahem, getting on a bit.  You know, like David Bowie, who’s now 64, Peter Blake, just turned 79 - or Honor Blackman at a youthful 85 and Debbie Harry, who was 66 yesterday.  Life will always have shitty bits in it so why not welcome a time of maturity when you can (hopefully) let go of at least some of your angst – all that obsessing about what people think of you and who said what to whom and a preoccupation with trying to look like somebody else’s idea of ‘perfect’…  It’s SO nice when all that goes.  I really don’t want to soap-box here but I’m sure you know what I mean.

I admit that it does seem a little easier these days at least for some to still be considered cool  into older age.  Those in their forties, fifties and sixties onwards have already established a legacy of great rock’n’roll and art, for instance, which is lapped up and, happily, willingly acknowledged by subsequent generations of teenagers.  I think that is something which has only emerged in the last few decades as it wasn’t so long ago that Alex Harvey was described in a music paper, with some degree of wonder, as “.. still rocking at forty!”  Yeah, their exclamation mark.  I don’t know about you, but forty seems like no real age to me and the idea that somebody could still be rocking at it (and not in a rocking chair, wearing slippers and sipping cocoa) is not exactly headline material in my books. 

Anyway…. whilst I might often crave firmer flesh, more energy and fewer responsibilities, and wish myself back to a day when every time I bent down I didn’t let out an involuntary grunt (you wondered what I was going to say then, didn’t you?), when it comes down to it I think I really quite like being this age.  I feel like I know who I am a little more clearly now.  Besides, if I’d been any younger in 1978 I’d never have been allowed into that Siouxsie & the Banshees gig….

Of course if I still feel the same way in ten years’ time I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, here’s a brilliant single from 1975 (those chords, that voice!).  A great film I'd originally included here is no longer available from Youtube so it's just the audio version now.  By the way, Peter Hammill will be 63 this year…

 Rikki Nadir (aka Peter Hammill): Birthday Special (1975)