Sunday, 12 August 2012
Transmission Break
We apologise for the break in transmission. Liz has been temporarily unable to post - but she will be back soon.
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Species
The morning has been spent yelling down the telephone. Now, Liz, herself, has been suffering from a degree of 'could-you-speak-up-please' and secretly plotting to ask the Doctor for a referral to a hearing facility. What I hadn't registered, below the intellectual level that is, where one can have information without knowledge, was that many people of my acquaintance were in the same boat. It is discomforting to bellow one's name at top volume to someone one has known since childhood. Indeed, I sequester it in the drawer marked "Growing Evidence of Encroaching Madness".As to that, you must have noticed. There are certain people and certain situations that make you wonder whether you are still in your your right mind. This phenomenon is triggered much more readily with age, I find. One has a very clear memory of an event, a significant, even life-changing event, and The Other, involved in every scintilla at the time, looks at one as if Swahili were the currency of the story when it is recounted years later. I digress: in this technocological age there must be a telephonic device that can be installed at one end or the other - or both - to enhance the volume. Please, do let me know. As you will have gathered, the Guru, who knows everything that falls under the heading of 'Twenty First Century Living' now lives a life so busy even I feel pressured, myself, if I have to ask his help in navigating the simple electronic everyday. It is actually good for me, in a way, because it forces me to drag myself up the learning curve without him. Which is about the only exercise I'm capable of these days. All the fuss in the papers about exercise saving our lives: what if the degree of one's mobility makes that a nonsense? A few days ago, a young man shot out of a shop and barged straight in to me. I thought I was being mugged. In fact, that was not his intention, but he sent me flying. Happily, I fell against a wall and not to the ground, so escaped with nothing but shock and hurt pride. Hurt pride, why? Well, I got the full poor-old-lady-treatment from passers-by. While the help was welcome, it was also galling not to have been able to chase after him and whack him about the head with my umbrella and some unladylike language.
I do sometimes wonder what we oldies could be capable of if push came to shove. Would I have been able to catch him up and do him injury had I, or a loved one, been in real danger? These are eventualities you don't think of until you get there. There is an aura, an ambience around age which is clearly perceived by the not-old. We are a different kettle of fish: a different species. Sometimes, travelling by air, I ask for a wheelchair because the distances are challenging at most airports. I am dealt with as if the chair were empty. My passport and boarding card are taken from me although I could easily reach up to the relevant desks. The attendant is asked "can she stand? The up-side is that many of the potential embarrassments are actually quite funny. If the people walking through me, barging passed me, letting their eyes roll off me could hear what my inner voice was saying their wide-eyed disbelief would cause them to call the police or even Social Services. Having survived the danger of being driven mad by those who dont understand Swahili, I could find myself under secure guard, after all, for age-inappropriate language and behaviour. While I do have sufficient faculty, however, I shall resign myself to the loss of umbrella weilding and learning curve trekking, carry on editing my vocabulary and concentrate on excercise of the mind instead.
That's enough green ink. (Those of you kind keepers-up will know what I mean by that) My excuse is that you did sign up for an insight in to life on the outside versus life on the inside of those of us beyond the biblical limit of three score and ten. The trouble is, at a distance of a few hundred words, can I remember whyever I reached for that ink-pot in the first place?
ps A.V. Are you still there?
I do sometimes wonder what we oldies could be capable of if push came to shove. Would I have been able to catch him up and do him injury had I, or a loved one, been in real danger? These are eventualities you don't think of until you get there. There is an aura, an ambience around age which is clearly perceived by the not-old. We are a different kettle of fish: a different species. Sometimes, travelling by air, I ask for a wheelchair because the distances are challenging at most airports. I am dealt with as if the chair were empty. My passport and boarding card are taken from me although I could easily reach up to the relevant desks. The attendant is asked "can she stand? The up-side is that many of the potential embarrassments are actually quite funny. If the people walking through me, barging passed me, letting their eyes roll off me could hear what my inner voice was saying their wide-eyed disbelief would cause them to call the police or even Social Services. Having survived the danger of being driven mad by those who dont understand Swahili, I could find myself under secure guard, after all, for age-inappropriate language and behaviour. While I do have sufficient faculty, however, I shall resign myself to the loss of umbrella weilding and learning curve trekking, carry on editing my vocabulary and concentrate on excercise of the mind instead.
That's enough green ink. (Those of you kind keepers-up will know what I mean by that) My excuse is that you did sign up for an insight in to life on the outside versus life on the inside of those of us beyond the biblical limit of three score and ten. The trouble is, at a distance of a few hundred words, can I remember whyever I reached for that ink-pot in the first place?
ps A.V. Are you still there?
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Snow
The point about snow is that once it has gone, it has gone. No-one knows where. No-one can find it again. No-one can prove even that it was there. The same is true for my waist. Now, normally this would be of no interest to anyone but me, but the time came for me to look out the scarlet swimsuit with which loyal followers will be only too familiar, and it doesn't fit. There you are. I've said it. Black and white makes for the scarlet truth. Unfortunately, it can be proved that it was there. There are photographs. I am of the age when bikinis first appeared. I appeared in one. I even knew why they were called bikinis. The provenance of the name was of my era. What's more, I looked alright in one. Now, I should frighten the horses. There are options. I can go and look for another swimsuit that will fit or I can lose weight and fit into the one I already have and love. Currently the jury is out about which is likely to be the more efficient or effective or both. It encouraged me to think about what else had gone with the snow. My ankles have. Why is it that the elderly lose their ankles? I keep looking. It is true of nearly all the women of my age that I look at. Should a skirt be essential, I do have little boots which come over my ankles and make a really good job of disguising them. However, they are a bit of a challenge to put on because, guess what, I've lost flexibility in my hands and wrists so, unless I've left myself more time than scatterbrains usually do, I am obliged to climb in to my trousers after all.
There was a time when I had a whole lexicon of words: nouns, adverbs, adjectives, anything you might ask for which the crossword throws up. Gone, like the above frozen precipitation: gone. You will be familiar, I think, with the old man in my archive pushing his ladder along the rows of information stored in my head, searching for whatever it is I need. Mostly, he gets there. Mostly, I can produce the word before the need for it is obselete. Often, though, I incur the cost of phoning the Father of my children whose archivist, although even older than mine, does remain sharp and reliable. "What's the word for....?" I ask. He tells me. I thank him and replace the receiver. I have another friend of some erudition. I ring him, too. He never laughs at me. He is never impatient. He will search his own lexicon and generously produce answers even of the far from archane. Where do they go, the words I used to have?
Where does love lost go? Ah there you have it: a mystery. How can one love passionately and forevermore and find, as the song goes, that forevermore is shorter than before? Is there a drawer in which that love will linger? Is there an attic where it is stored with old tennis rackets and broken toys? Of course not. It is lying with the snow of times that have passed. I have a fantasy that there is a door behind which I will find my children. Not the man and women they have become; their toddler selves. It is as if those were different people, exisiting separately from the people of today. There is no such door. Those toddlers are no more. Where have they gone? They are in memory. That's where they are. The snows of yesteryear may have turned to slush and gone down the drain. But the words, the waist, all the things that can't be found must just have moved on and out to leave room for the memories we would languish without. Don't you think? Nos da.
There was a time when I had a whole lexicon of words: nouns, adverbs, adjectives, anything you might ask for which the crossword throws up. Gone, like the above frozen precipitation: gone. You will be familiar, I think, with the old man in my archive pushing his ladder along the rows of information stored in my head, searching for whatever it is I need. Mostly, he gets there. Mostly, I can produce the word before the need for it is obselete. Often, though, I incur the cost of phoning the Father of my children whose archivist, although even older than mine, does remain sharp and reliable. "What's the word for....?" I ask. He tells me. I thank him and replace the receiver. I have another friend of some erudition. I ring him, too. He never laughs at me. He is never impatient. He will search his own lexicon and generously produce answers even of the far from archane. Where do they go, the words I used to have?
Where does love lost go? Ah there you have it: a mystery. How can one love passionately and forevermore and find, as the song goes, that forevermore is shorter than before? Is there a drawer in which that love will linger? Is there an attic where it is stored with old tennis rackets and broken toys? Of course not. It is lying with the snow of times that have passed. I have a fantasy that there is a door behind which I will find my children. Not the man and women they have become; their toddler selves. It is as if those were different people, exisiting separately from the people of today. There is no such door. Those toddlers are no more. Where have they gone? They are in memory. That's where they are. The snows of yesteryear may have turned to slush and gone down the drain. But the words, the waist, all the things that can't be found must just have moved on and out to leave room for the memories we would languish without. Don't you think? Nos da.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Doors
There was a sudden image. Knowing what I had in mind to put to you, I waited for a title to turn up. I saw a row of doors and that did the trick. The doors are to represent a stage of life. You are not supposed to open the one next to where you find yourself until it is the right moment to do so. It's simple, really. The significant example which comes to mind finds behind it clumsiness. Throughout my middle years I would stand, with impatience politely concealed, in a queue behind an elderly lady paying for goods. Two minutes to undo the zip of her purse, three minutes to count out the money - if she were particularly adept, several more for her to accept and accommodate the change and then do up her zip again. Remember to step backwards as she lumbers round to move away, dropping her stick in the crush. Sometimes, there'd be a hint of rueful smile, as if she knew, but rarely. Thanking Whomever I was not thus incapacitated I would rush through my own transaction and get on with my day .Not any more. That door is open and I am on the other side it. The queue is behind me and, this being the 21st Century, there is rather more obvious impatience breathing down my neck. I was constantly bending down to pick up elderly dropped walking sticks. Would you like to see the batter and bruises on mine?
Another door is marked 'invisibility'. Honestly, I can't remember if I walked straight through the invisible Elderly, pushed passed them and cut them up at the entrance to the Post Office. But I doubt it. Manners were better because they still mattered. Even when the root of good manners is a wish to be acceptable to others, the effect is a good one. Goodness knows why they have, for the most part, ceased to matter. The Guru, very much of this Century, would doubtless postulate that they do still matter: they have just changed. He was jolly cross when I brought out a crossword to do when we were eating together and he brought out his phone to send a text message on it, or receive one. Who knows. It was, in any case, a parallel conversation to the one we were supposed to be having. He could understand the'rudeness' in the crossword but found his own behaviour totally normal. I got one of those eyebrow up, right-one-'ere looks. There are two doors there: 'invisibilty' and 'manners'. It is clear to see, on a daily 'bus queue basis, how I have walked through the door to 'invisibilty': a definite disadvantage. I may still be on the right side of'' manners', though, unless I've walked through the disguised 'it-was-much better-in-my-day' door. How restless I would become on the fringe of a conversation between my Mother and her friends which would inevitably include quite a number of 'good old days' lamentations. Whatever the Past had held, it was certainly a much better place then the Present. I am currently in charge of the scripts of those conversations and regularly read them aloud. Incidentally, I am also invisible in many restaurants. Whether that is age or the woman-on-her-own syndrome or both of the above is irrelevant. I have taken to wearing a dash of the outrageous just as a ya boo and sucks statement. (Is that a ladylike expression?) What do I mean? Well, a scarlet jacket or multi-coloured beads give one a certain je ne sais quoi. Yes I do know: a certain eccentricity. It may be threatening instead but that beats invisible any day.
I once saw a play the set of which consisted of a row of doors. Throughout, the characters dashed in and out of these doors, creating, anyway for me, total chaos and confusion. That's it: a metaphor for life, mine anyway. Prynhawn da
Another door is marked 'invisibility'. Honestly, I can't remember if I walked straight through the invisible Elderly, pushed passed them and cut them up at the entrance to the Post Office. But I doubt it. Manners were better because they still mattered. Even when the root of good manners is a wish to be acceptable to others, the effect is a good one. Goodness knows why they have, for the most part, ceased to matter. The Guru, very much of this Century, would doubtless postulate that they do still matter: they have just changed. He was jolly cross when I brought out a crossword to do when we were eating together and he brought out his phone to send a text message on it, or receive one. Who knows. It was, in any case, a parallel conversation to the one we were supposed to be having. He could understand the'rudeness' in the crossword but found his own behaviour totally normal. I got one of those eyebrow up, right-one-'ere looks. There are two doors there: 'invisibilty' and 'manners'. It is clear to see, on a daily 'bus queue basis, how I have walked through the door to 'invisibilty': a definite disadvantage. I may still be on the right side of'' manners', though, unless I've walked through the disguised 'it-was-much better-in-my-day' door. How restless I would become on the fringe of a conversation between my Mother and her friends which would inevitably include quite a number of 'good old days' lamentations. Whatever the Past had held, it was certainly a much better place then the Present. I am currently in charge of the scripts of those conversations and regularly read them aloud. Incidentally, I am also invisible in many restaurants. Whether that is age or the woman-on-her-own syndrome or both of the above is irrelevant. I have taken to wearing a dash of the outrageous just as a ya boo and sucks statement. (Is that a ladylike expression?) What do I mean? Well, a scarlet jacket or multi-coloured beads give one a certain je ne sais quoi. Yes I do know: a certain eccentricity. It may be threatening instead but that beats invisible any day.
I once saw a play the set of which consisted of a row of doors. Throughout, the characters dashed in and out of these doors, creating, anyway for me, total chaos and confusion. That's it: a metaphor for life, mine anyway. Prynhawn da
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Frustration
Having done my research, as a good writer should, I find that I have written about frustration before. Those of you kind enough to have been thorough camp followers may well have noticed this so it seemed prudent to let you know I knew. (Liz has always been haunted by the imagining of being found out. Actually, I doubt whether any of you has really got the bother quotient to hold the title of my blogposts in your memory. I havent.) Anyway, frustration: my computer stands on a table in front of a window in my bedroom. As it happens, it is more of a bed-sitting room because, alone, it's where I do most of my living. There is a very nice view of trees, a studio in the adjacent garden my neighbour uses for singing lessons, and, if I crane my neck sideways, a sight of the major hospital just down the road. I can also see the ivy covered shed in my own garden under which a family of six foxes has made its home, (of which, more another time). Over the windows is set a pair of grilles fastened by an 'I-mean-business' padlock. This security measure seemed reasonable when I was a proper person working and leading an organised life. I am at home a great deal more in retirement so present and possessed of a walking stick should an intruder fancy having a go at breaking and entering on the off-chance. I digress. When the Wizard of Cyberspace chooses to drive me to the edge of forebearance and the drive moves on to a desire, nay, a need, to throw the machine out of the window I would first need to move things off the table and draped over it to reveal the drawer in which I keep the key to the padlock, shift the table forward a goodly bit so that I can get in behind it and in front of the window, unlock the padlock, push open the grilles, undo the latch on the window and lift it open sufficiently to accommodate the defenestration of a computer. In winter, I should have, furthermore, to displace a sleeping cat from the environs of a hot radiator which also occupies the fore-window space. By the time these manoeuvres are complete the feeling has gone. Therefore, I give up and the computer lives to frustrate another time.
Were all such frustrations so fortuitously dealt with. My mobile phone got wet. No, I don't know how, either. The Guru came out with his habitual "you must have done something" which grows even less helpful as the years go by. The facts are that it was fine when I switched it off one night and covered in mist next morning. I tried the hair-dryer, I tried blowing. I tried soft-hankie wiping. Nothing worked. I crept to my supplier and confronted the reality that this would be Good-bye. I would have to accept a new one. What I hadn't taken in was that I would lose not only my friendly phone whose systems I knew and could work, but also all the numbers of my friendly - and ex-directory - friends. It is not easy for an old lady to adjust to such new phenomena, however forty she feels. I had to learn some numbers are stored. Some are not. It's no good explaining this to me. Everyone has tried and I still can't work out how, why, who makes these storing decisions. Therefore, if you know I love you and am likely to miss you if there is no communication between us, please send your number to my new mobile phone - my number hasn't changed - and tell it to register itself in such a way that the next time the Wizard of Cyberspace spills damp moondust on it overnight it shall be kept in the forever compartment where there are quite invisible grilles and padlocks to keep it safe. Nos da.
Were all such frustrations so fortuitously dealt with. My mobile phone got wet. No, I don't know how, either. The Guru came out with his habitual "you must have done something" which grows even less helpful as the years go by. The facts are that it was fine when I switched it off one night and covered in mist next morning. I tried the hair-dryer, I tried blowing. I tried soft-hankie wiping. Nothing worked. I crept to my supplier and confronted the reality that this would be Good-bye. I would have to accept a new one. What I hadn't taken in was that I would lose not only my friendly phone whose systems I knew and could work, but also all the numbers of my friendly - and ex-directory - friends. It is not easy for an old lady to adjust to such new phenomena, however forty she feels. I had to learn some numbers are stored. Some are not. It's no good explaining this to me. Everyone has tried and I still can't work out how, why, who makes these storing decisions. Therefore, if you know I love you and am likely to miss you if there is no communication between us, please send your number to my new mobile phone - my number hasn't changed - and tell it to register itself in such a way that the next time the Wizard of Cyberspace spills damp moondust on it overnight it shall be kept in the forever compartment where there are quite invisible grilles and padlocks to keep it safe. Nos da.
Sunday, 17 June 2012
D VD
No, I am not going to go on about a way of viewing films you missed in the cinema nor complete runs of your favourite television series. In fact, I don't even know what the initials stand for in that context and the Guru, my 21st century expert, if asked, is so busy he wouldn't have the time to respond to anything unless it were a life and death crises. (Mind you, that has to be better than the torpor which sometimes sets in to this retired old lady's life. But I don't think he would think so as he struggles to find some hours in which to sleep) The DVD I had in mind was Death versus Divorce. This is a big question, one that comes to mind often. Naturally, at more than three score and ten one does think routinely about Death - always with a capital 'd' it would seem because this particularly typing of it acquired the capital 'd' without my conscious input. I have noticed, since my last birthday, how much nearer heart than head the thinking has become. Death is no longer an intellectual concept but a possibility that has me attacking my drawers and cupboards and rationalising purchases and investments. The attack on the drawers is ruthlessly to eliminate things which will never be used again. One of these days is now so there is no longer an option with that name to allow the preservation of short- or no- sleeve jumpers. High leg swim suits and low neck tops are also passed their 'use-by' date. In reality, I need a new car. Twelve years, or even thirteen, is a long time in the life of a car. At the moment, I depend on driving for a way of life which is still quite lively. At my age, that could stop without notice. This would contra-indicate the investment in a new one, wouldn't you say?
But the thrust of what I wanted to say was more to do with the death of others. You would expect me to have lost quite a few nears and dears by now. The world narrows. There is a funnel effect with the number of loved and liked ones squeezing through to the end being hugely fewer than the number who crowded in at the beginning. There is pain. The pain is not only for the empty space but also for the acknowledgement that some things cannot be remedied. There is no cure for death. There is no putting it right, getting round it. It is, however, a clean pain once the cataclysmic acceptance has been acquired. Divorce is different. To the pain of death one must add the pain of rejection, of failure, of exclusion, of 'what-ifs'. When the divorce is from a child it seems survival depends on an intrinsic parental love, if you are the kind of parent who feels like that,which, on-going, rejoices in the child's survival, his/her well-being in the world: a concept unfathomable to the child if he/she is childless him/herself, I suspect. (Political Correctness is not known for enhancing the rhythym of a sentence, is it?.) The idea that someone whom you carried inside you for nine months, who clung to your breast, who lightened at the sight of you, who took your sleep, tested your patience, made you aware of a love beyond imagining, (if that was your experience ), should end up not liking you may be rather worse than death. Currently, I am reading a Buddhist book on death. It is a book I first read when I was nearer forty than eighty. It says much more to me now than then. Perhaps, the answer is that calm acceptance of life and death must also come to include divorce. Let me remind you of something I put to you many posts ago: death robs a relationship of its acrimony. Divorce robs it of its tenderness. What do you think?
Liz's job is usually to laugh wryly at the irony of outer 75 versus inner 40. Thank God, Buddha or anyone in whom you have faith - or none - that is so possible most of the time. Occasionally, though, one must let a wise old witch have her say and, I fear, the witch is better known for her cackle than her giggle. Anyway, I wouldn't know where in the machine to slot the DVD to watch it even if it were one of "The Murdoch Mysteries", my favourite of all time, so who am I to pontificate? Nos da.
But the thrust of what I wanted to say was more to do with the death of others. You would expect me to have lost quite a few nears and dears by now. The world narrows. There is a funnel effect with the number of loved and liked ones squeezing through to the end being hugely fewer than the number who crowded in at the beginning. There is pain. The pain is not only for the empty space but also for the acknowledgement that some things cannot be remedied. There is no cure for death. There is no putting it right, getting round it. It is, however, a clean pain once the cataclysmic acceptance has been acquired. Divorce is different. To the pain of death one must add the pain of rejection, of failure, of exclusion, of 'what-ifs'. When the divorce is from a child it seems survival depends on an intrinsic parental love, if you are the kind of parent who feels like that,which, on-going, rejoices in the child's survival, his/her well-being in the world: a concept unfathomable to the child if he/she is childless him/herself, I suspect. (Political Correctness is not known for enhancing the rhythym of a sentence, is it?.) The idea that someone whom you carried inside you for nine months, who clung to your breast, who lightened at the sight of you, who took your sleep, tested your patience, made you aware of a love beyond imagining, (if that was your experience ), should end up not liking you may be rather worse than death. Currently, I am reading a Buddhist book on death. It is a book I first read when I was nearer forty than eighty. It says much more to me now than then. Perhaps, the answer is that calm acceptance of life and death must also come to include divorce. Let me remind you of something I put to you many posts ago: death robs a relationship of its acrimony. Divorce robs it of its tenderness. What do you think?
Liz's job is usually to laugh wryly at the irony of outer 75 versus inner 40. Thank God, Buddha or anyone in whom you have faith - or none - that is so possible most of the time. Occasionally, though, one must let a wise old witch have her say and, I fear, the witch is better known for her cackle than her giggle. Anyway, I wouldn't know where in the machine to slot the DVD to watch it even if it were one of "The Murdoch Mysteries", my favourite of all time, so who am I to pontificate? Nos da.
Monday, 4 June 2012
Jubilation
Those of you on Mars or some other Planet of the inner world, may not have registered that, in the UK, we are in the middle of celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth 11. Well, we are. This is the third of four days of celebrations which have encompassed just about all forms of representation. It both suits me and disturbs me. It suits me because, to someone who likes, needs, even, for things to be as they are expected to be, the sheer competence of the arrangements, the thought-throughfulness of every miniscule detail pleases and sooths me. I am left feeling there may be an alrightness in the world after all. For this to pertain even when the Gods saw fit to pour water on our presumption from a black and determined sky , I found so settling I am tempted to analyse whatever could have left me so in need of the reassurance. It's OK. Read on. I am going to do no such thing.I was not actually there. I was just glued to the television set. But there was something so completely natural, normal, about the little finale choir on top of a boat singing their patriotic hearts out, their hair plastered to their heads, rain dripping off their chins that I was left with an acute awareness that the basic nonsense of life is what makes sense of it. A spirit of 'I said I would so I will' assailed both Monarch and Choir so that the one, nearer 90 than 80, and the other, undergoing torture by water, were joined by a committment that, for me, gave meaning to what we are here for.
You must'nt think that I have lost that essential focus on the question the examiner has set: 75 going on 40.
Because I have been there: where? I was on the edge of the Mall, for the Coronation. It rained. I was soaked. I was separated from my friends. . There were no mobile phones. No way, so taken as normal in this, the Electronic Age, to re-establish contact. I had'nt lived in London long. I was tempted to be panic stricken. But the spectacle took over and I was able to talk myself in to a belief that all would be well in the best of all possible worlds. It was. I found a phone box and telephoned my landlady, telling her where I would make for if my friends rang to ask. That is what they did. Communication was not easy but it did hone one's ingenuity. The bigger difference, though, is that I was there. It was with a shaft of deep sadness I realised that I was not really up for it sixty years later. The Guru, who was planning a riverside picnic with his Dear-One and family, seemed horrified at the thought I might want to join them. Dear Reader, I did, so much want to. My forty-year-old spirit was drawn like breath from my old,old body. It was pushing down to a vantage point, wrapping a water-proof around me, improvising. I could 'see' the whole scenario. However, good sense and a sense of propriety did prevail. Apart from the physical daunt, there would have been the embarrassment of being looked after and considered: more dampening to everyone than the interminable rain. The Mother of the Dear-One is younger than my older daughter! That gave a new perspective to my pretensions. I recognise that I am fighting the reality of age at a more significant level than I was. Liz may laughingly imagine that 40 will prevail in the end, or over all. It won't; at least, not physically and that, inevitably, has an affect on the spirit. So now you know why the celebrations disturb as well as suit me: I am forced to look at a different level of reailty. I am 75 going on 80. But that should be fun, too. Bore da.
You must'nt think that I have lost that essential focus on the question the examiner has set: 75 going on 40.
Because I have been there: where? I was on the edge of the Mall, for the Coronation. It rained. I was soaked. I was separated from my friends. . There were no mobile phones. No way, so taken as normal in this, the Electronic Age, to re-establish contact. I had'nt lived in London long. I was tempted to be panic stricken. But the spectacle took over and I was able to talk myself in to a belief that all would be well in the best of all possible worlds. It was. I found a phone box and telephoned my landlady, telling her where I would make for if my friends rang to ask. That is what they did. Communication was not easy but it did hone one's ingenuity. The bigger difference, though, is that I was there. It was with a shaft of deep sadness I realised that I was not really up for it sixty years later. The Guru, who was planning a riverside picnic with his Dear-One and family, seemed horrified at the thought I might want to join them. Dear Reader, I did, so much want to. My forty-year-old spirit was drawn like breath from my old,old body. It was pushing down to a vantage point, wrapping a water-proof around me, improvising. I could 'see' the whole scenario. However, good sense and a sense of propriety did prevail. Apart from the physical daunt, there would have been the embarrassment of being looked after and considered: more dampening to everyone than the interminable rain. The Mother of the Dear-One is younger than my older daughter! That gave a new perspective to my pretensions. I recognise that I am fighting the reality of age at a more significant level than I was. Liz may laughingly imagine that 40 will prevail in the end, or over all. It won't; at least, not physically and that, inevitably, has an affect on the spirit. So now you know why the celebrations disturb as well as suit me: I am forced to look at a different level of reailty. I am 75 going on 80. But that should be fun, too. Bore da.
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