holidaying

I owe you all an apology: I went away without saying I was going to and you may well have decided I had given up blogging. I haven't. I just hope you haven't all lost interest and moved on. My Guru will tell me how I can let you all know that I'm back. I seem to have had quite a few little trips since I started telling you what it was like to be a 40 year-old in a body that is 75. This last trip was a real holiday though, not specially to see a loved one or check on unsaleable flats. I have been on what the young call a road trip; touring would describe it for me. I have been touring through France ultimately making for a seaside resort to which I first went in 1963.

It was definitely one of the best holidays I have had; no airport hassle, no limit to liquids, no confiscated favourite nail scissors nor make-up remover, no standing in endless check-in queues, just sitting in a shortish line of other cars waiting to board an old-fashioned ferry with SOMEONE ELSE DRIVING. What could describe bliss better? Actually, someone close to me did describe motoring bliss as a full tank, empty bladder and you own choice of music on the C.D player. I am in very good accord with my recent driver, though, who tells me when we need petrol, is sympathetic about pit stops for the bladder, and whose choice of music is tolerable, considering he is only twenty- one. Anyway, we do have some favourites in common so between his, mine and ours there was lovely music for all of 2000 miles. (I don't really do kilometres so had to do some serious brushing up on my eight times table to convert to miles.)

We made three stops on the way south and three on the way back so were able to take advantage of minor roads as well as motor-ways, not being in a mad dash. I was remembering that, on one occasion in my other life, our family of five made five stops on the way to the sea and I was left with twenty-five pairs of dirty underwear to deal with when we got there. The following year I issued them all with disposable pants. There was outright rebellion and this is still just about the only thing they remember about their childhood summers and have never let me forget. I rather miss those days of "when-will-we-be-there? I-need-the loo. He/she keeps hitting me." But there are certainly compensations to grown-up touring.

The 40 year-old would have loved to explore some of the ancient places where we stopped much more thoroughly than the old lady had energy for. It is hard to get used to. In some ways I am turning in to a cliche: less capacity for on-foot exploration, a smaller appetite for delicious French food, a touch hard-of-hearing and, Dear Reader, 'D' shaped. If you have been following my posts, you may remember a scarlet swimsuit I treated myself to. Well, the truth is even that couldn't disguise the horrible reality that I no longer have a waist. I am the shape my daughters were when they were between, let's say, two and six. You must have noticed, life is circular; you start off with thin wispy hair, bandy legs and, for girls, anyway, no waist, and that's how you end up. Being careful how I move is hard, too. There is the fear of slipping. My inner voice and I are in constant conversation as she tries to stop me from the riskiest of my too young aspirations. This is all summed up in the spectacle of getting me in to the sea: a helping hand over the slippery slope of the first few feet and then - whoosh: plunge straight in as I always used to and strike out in a creditable free stroke. Only a handful, mind you, before the back rises in horror with the equivalent of " have you taken leave of your senses, woman ?" and I revert to a decorous side stroke. It was huge fun when the sea turned a bit rough and one could get away with playing in the waves. Hair? Oubliez les.

Anyway, I did have a memorably lovely time and will no doubt think of more to tell you another time. Do you know, I might even take a lap-top with me in future so that I don't have to stop the blog. I missed it. See you soon ( or l8tr, if that means more to you)

Homesickness?

If you would really like to know how I have been filling the gap between this post and the last, I have been back to my apparently unsaleable little sea-side studio to see whether I can move things on by letting it or by changing agents. I don' t think letting will work. When all the expenses have been taken off the rent, including agent's fees, tax and things like service charges - plus VAT as the potential letting agent kept telling me - my financial gain would be minimal and my gain in hassle enormous. To start with, I can't even add the 17 and a half% VAT on to the figures she was quoting so how do I aspire to full-blown landlordship? The bath got through with an "unusual" but the bed which doubles as a settee, (so I can sleep with the sound of the sea in my ears, of course, although part of the overall space has been partitioned off as a bedroom) would have to go and be replaced with a real settee. Oh Dear! more hasselous by the second. Anyway, I don't think either of us was deceived by my "I'll think about it" response.Thinking about it would only underline the lack of fuel in my coping tank and she seemed to sense that, or else she had identified the source of my deathly pallor. Either way, we shook hands in a final kind of way.



Whatever happens to it, I am having to face up to relinquishing my toe-hold in my home parish.I had never seen myself as attached to it before now and the sophisticated part of me is slightly cynical about the wrench I am beginning to feel. People I have known all my life were there with their children and grandchildren, providing a continuity which keeps them forever in touch with our roots wherever they live for the rest of the time. I rather envy that. My own young are too busy and too far-ranging to spend time there and there are, as you will remember, no grand-young, anyway as yet. I don't think I feel 40 inside about this; this is a uniform feeling of both my ages....and a touch sentimental, too, so let us gloss over it and talk about other things.

Though, to be perfectly frank, there has not been as much contact with the inner 40 year-old in the few days I have been talking about. I felt every moment of 75 arriving after six hours in the car on a journey which should have taken three and a half. I felt I had no choice but to travel on a Saturday and August Saturdays, I'm told, are change-over days; people holiday from one Saturday to another, so Everyman, his wife, his little ones, his bicycle, his tent and his dog was on the road. The gantries were flashing 50 mph warnings. No problem: we were only doing 20 anyway,and that on a good stretch. ( I feel better having told you that. If I did'nt realise about Saturday change-over how could I hope to be a letting person?) New ways of coping have to be devised, not only because of age but also because of travelling alone. Four trips to the car with not very much rather than the one trip with lots that I would have managed in the past. (Confession: I did try to carry more but the time spent on picking up the things dribbled on to the path with what my Mother would have called 'a lazy man's load' was a shame-making waste and I am surprised I've told you. Leave a comment so I know you are not put-off.) Where are the strong young rugby players with nice bottoms I have relied on in the journeys of yesteryear? Oh yes: at the airport, of course. See you soon -ish.

PS The query over the title is because I am trying not to believe I am suffering from it.

mores

The other evening, I watched a film made in 1953 when I was 20! It was "Roman Holiday". Now there was, indeed a link between then and now, even before I matured to 40. There was a link because I felt just the same as I remember feeling then: delighted, amused and moved, too. After all, this beautiful, richly endowed and other-worldly young Princess stole out of her gilded cage and spent 24 hours as an ordinary mortal, enjoying Rome. Except she was'nt quite as normal as I would have been in the circumstances because she had Gregory Peck to fall in love with - which, as it happens, I think I did every time I saw him on the screen. The girl, you may well know, was Audrey Hepburn and the film was billed as "introducing Audrey Hepburn". Not bad to be in an Oscar winning film on your very entry in to the business. Two things struck me this time around that would not have been relevant in 1953: she looked border-line anorectic. So thin there must have been deliberate decisions about whether to film her sideways or not. And, of course, there was no what you might call 'consummation' of the relationship which developed between the two characters who did, in all other ways, fall in love. These days, they would have shared a bed and its concomittant activities before you could say "censor". "Brief Encounter" is another such. I suppose that has been one of the more obvious indicators of the revolution in mores since my younger days.

I find myself wondering, however, if abstinence was what was actually practised in real life as it was in films. I think it certainly was to a much greater extent. Perhaps, it wasn't decided by a moral attitude, but by the nearly non-existence of reliable contraception. Anyway, the likelihood of a one-off romantic encounter, with both pairs of feet off the ground that is, being an earth-moving, life-changing experience is not to be relied on either, so, all in all, why not let's leave it either out or to the imagination: dot dot dot as in Victorian novels. Nothing original in any of these thoughts but I still enjoy the reflecting.

During the reflection, in thebackground I have been listening to extracts from "The marriage of Figaro", the bit where the Count asks the Countess to forgive him, (from trying to exercise his feudal rights to 'bed' her maid on the night before her marriage - the maid's to Figaro, that is: you may remember). She does. I do wonder whether anything has changed there. Is the pain of infidelity any different in the 18th Century, the 20th century or now. What do you think?

I can't understand why I have embarked on such a serious question as the changing mores in sexual - or any - behaviour when it is August and, if it were not for the Olympics and Russia and Georgia, the newspapers would be scratching round for material to amuse our holiday mood. I think I'd better leave it for now, particularly since I shall have to find time to clean the front of my pale grey trousers, covered by newsprint from resting said newspaper on my tummy as I lay reading it on the bed trying to avoid the Olympics and trying not to worry about THE FUTURE; scarcely worth it at my age, you will say.

Relating 1

Well, there you are. I am pleased to see you haven't disappeared while I have been visiting a loved one, at 34c in my scarlet swimming costume. He is there to work so we could not spend all that much time together. He joined me for breakfast on his day off announcing there were not many people he would be up for at 10 o'clock in the morning on his day off. There are not many people I would tolerate 34c for, on my day off or any other day come to that, so we agreed we were 'ad idem' in the fondness stakes, though, I suspect , secretly he did see his as the greater sacrifice. It got me thinking about relationships. Now, I don't want to mislead you: I spend most of my life thinking about relationships, professionally and for pleasure. Gossip and curiosity have been my hobbies throughout my whole life. Perhaps , what I should have said is that it prompted more thinking about relationships when I should have been on holiday and giving my brain a good rest. Anyway, it is, actually, very simple: there are people for whom we would gladly over-heat or for whom we would happily lose sleep , and there are people who make us boil and who annoy us in to losing sleep!
I do get rather over-heated on the subject of the Estate Agent who has been handling the sale of my sea-side studio. (See 'Demandingness') An accepted offer has now fallen through and I am not sanguine about the quality of his interest in selling it with its bath in the living room "not to everybody's taste". At the time we accepted the offer my instinct told me it should not be counted on and I asked him not to take it off the market. I don't know, and he did'nt explain whether this was ethical, or even legal, or not, but he did not do as I asked and made no effort to find another buyer. So we are back to the begining in an appalling state of the market. I was reminded of this when a dear friend was talking about a rather glamorous new boy-friend she has acquired. In the first flush of the relationship he seemed to be everything a girl could wish for, good-looking, gifted, kind, thoughtful, sensitive, not in the least competitive - she is quite something in the glamour/achievement stakes herself - and altogether good news. No grown-up would really expect this to go on being an unadulterated account of the state of the affair and, gradually, the picture has had to be modified; not much, I have to say, but modified, nevertheless. The principal addendum is that he doesn't do long-term committment. My dear friend sees that this, as it happens, suits her, too and they are having a lovely time enjoying the here and now: enjoying living. What amused me was the link with the Estate Agent: although she is, as it were, under offer, that need'nt mean she should come off the market. These agreements do fall through and other prospects could be kept on the books. What do you think? The question of ethics remains relevant, but the point of telling you was more about the parallel with house selling, which amused me, than about the question of right and wrong.

I have just added a 1 to the title. Relating could easily run to 101, but that's as far as we can go to-day. See you soon.

Adapting

Titles are sometimes elusive. It's not as if there haven't been examples in the blog, already, of my having to adapt my 75 year-old self to my 40 year-old aspirations, but it came to me that there is a number of devices I deal with on a daily basis that I have come to take so much for granted that I scarcely notice them and they deserve an airing. For instance, I have been making a Kaftan, as you do if you are going to spend a few days near water and have to make your way there via public spaces. There is a sensible limit to the amount of space and time when your actual swimsuit - however red - should be witnessed by A.N. Others and a full-length Kaftan will hide any number of sins. Anyway, I have been busily stitching for a day or so and am pleased with the result; (also red, dots and shapes on a white background, if you must know). I had to convert two and a half metres of fabric into this garment. That's quite a lot of back-stitching; all the way up two sides, two hems hemstitched and hemstitching around the neckline cut from the top. As I stitched, two forward one back - I think: it is hard to picture without doing it - it reminded me of the way I have to tackle stairs, right foot on the stair, then left foot on the same stair. I can't always walk up them one foot after the other, as in what you might call running stitch. Silly, isn't it, but it amused me.

It also sent me to the stairs to do a bit of practice. I can't be seen backstitching up the stairs in some slightly glamorous hotel at the sea-side, a converted ancient mansion, without the lifts (elevators, if you are over the Pond) which would ruin its integrity. I have to report, Dear Reader, that practice has made perfect and I can now reliably do stairs in the way I didn't even notice when I was your age. I am also slightly ashamed, though pleased because I may yet be able to improve my performance on broken-down escalators (see earlier post!) Ashamed, because Someone-Who-Knows has been telling me for ages that it just needed practice and perseverance to conquer the stairs and strengthen the legs.

Opening things requires ingenuity, too. I use my teeth. I told you about the lovely B and B where I stayed in Scotland, didn't I? At breakfast, cooked while you wait and in any permutation you can think of, conserves were served in little packets. Impossible for arthritic hands so, teeth, mine own, as it happens. Can't think how the dentally challenged arthritic would manage. Anyway, there I was tearing at my honey pack like a dog with a bone, when I realised I was being what you might call, if you were kindly disposed, supervised by an elderly gentleman at the same table. "I'm so sorry, " I tried, helpfully, "no strength in my fingers, to-day". "You did that, yesterday, too". Oops, hadn't even been consciously aware of it yesterday, it seems so natural. Take ring-pulls. Well, I can't. I have to use a tin opener. My cat sees that as a huge advantage. She wouldnt be able to hear me tug at a ring-pull. I have to ravish an envelope to get to what is inside. Often I don't open them if they don't look worth doing time for. Don't even think of trying to change the sim card in your mobile phone if you are me. I have to keep the same one whatever seductive offers come my way rather than keep stabbing the little door that would let me in to its intestines to transfer them to a new one even if the new one will do everything except make tea for me. But I must be honest. I really love my little phone and that's really the reason I don't operate on it. It was one of the first objects I owned in the struggle to join the current world. And, though you haven't actually, asked, I thought you would like to know that I do have a sewing machine. The geography of my house is such that I can't watch television and sew unless I do it by hand, and I have the sort of conscience that prefers to do something while passively watching television, having been brought up to see entertainment in which one wasn't participating as rather decadent. Archaic, or what? See you soon.

Learning

Before I tell you what inspired this particular title, I have something rather exciting for an elderly, computer-illiterate blogger to report: someone in Canada and also someone in Australia has been reading 75goingon40 ! I am so excited, but my Guru is totally unmoved. I got the words of one syllable treatment about World Wide Web and all that and where had I thought my readership was coming from, Goring-on-Thames? Now, I think Goring is a delightful place but it is probably more Home Counties than Where-It's-At. In other words, like me, well-behaved and decorous rather than dare-devil and cosmopolitan and therefore, less, or not likely to do blog reading. ( In case you are still reading this out there in the 'foreign' world, Home Counties may be used, in politically incorrect company, to suggest unadventurous and conventional).

But, of course, there is, nevertheless, a link, if a bit stretched, between what came to me to write to-day and the above. That is, I had to learn from said Guru, how to find out where people were who were logging in. You will have guessed, no doubt, given my transparent ignorance - I was tempted to write 'innocence', but that would be just sympathy seeking - in all matters computer- related that it was the Guru who set all this up and who monitors it and tries to negotiate with the cyber-wizards to minimise my losses and mistakes. He, himself, is not in the UK; he is only a channel or so away, but it had never struck me as miraculous that he was able to read it. There was, however, something more magic about Canada and Australia. Anyway, if you are still out there, Hello and welcome and please go on reading the posts. ( I hope you started at the bottom. If you are in Australia, you probably did, since you will be used to things being the wrong way up!)

To business; I was noticing how influential apparently throw-away, non- lessons could be. About half a century ago, I arrived very late at the point in Paris where buses left for the airport. (Les Invalides, if you must really test my historic memory) Hurriedly, in dodgy but optimistic French, I asked a porter to which desk I should report. I followed his waving arm if not his spoken instruction and presented myself at the wrong desk. Re-directed, I came, seriously late, to the right desk. Words rushing over themselves with relief to be uttered in their Mother tongue, I explained that it was the porter's fault for mis-directing me. " There is always someone who's fault it is" came the response. Dear Reader, I have never forgotten. It was my first lesson in taking responsibility for myself. Well, the first time such a lesson went in and lodged where it was needed .

One of the people whom I have loved most in my life was untidy and unhouseproud almost to the point of slatterliness. Taking my little first-born to see her, I would bring a cup and plate and spoon for his use so he wouldn't be exposed to the unnamed deathly horrors in residence in her kitchen, among her cups and plates and spoons, making up some story about how they were the only ones he could be persuaded to use. I doubt she was deceived for a moment and it will tell you something about her lovely character that she accepted this with grace and good manners. There came a time when she went away . I advanced upon her flat with dusters, polish, abrasives, vacuum cleaner, (you've guessed; she didnt have one), disinfectants, rubber gloves and my pinny and set to work to clean it within an inch of its life. I brought her back from the airport and stood back as she walked in and looked around. " Thank you dear. It will take me ages to get it back the way it was" she said. I think it sank in at last that we are all different and that there is more than one way to peel an apple. (You wouldn't expect me to use the more usual metaphor, would you now?) I don't think it necessarily interfered with my capacity to interfere, though.

One more 'lesson-by-default', for this time, anyway, shorter, less portentous and, in many ways, most useful. Advice from one who knew, about what to do with doubtful left-overs: put them in the freezer until you don't feel guilty about throwing them out. Think about it: the reverberations are without limit. See you soon.

Making demands

Demanding: moi? Of course not. The problem - perceived by others as a problem, I mean - is that I find I am able to ask for and do things at 75 the 40 year old would have dreamt not of. However, the combination of age and singularity (I have noticed the ambiguity) seems to invite a level of patronising and, sometimes indifference, I was rarely shown as a younger woman and that's what really causes the so-called demandingness: I am not so prepared to put up with it, now. If I have asked for my steak rare or my lamb pink and it turns up disguised as undyed leather I send it back. I am rather Victorian in my manner, and in my manners, too, but I do send it back. (By the way, have you noticed that, often, when you are having chicken and you companion has ordered beef, only one jug of gravy turns up?)

If I am trying to sell a tiny sea-side studio and my carefully chosen Estate Agent seems not to be on my side, I keep after him. I feel him sigh when I announce myself on the phone, but I still keep after him. Now, to be fair, I haven't made his job any easier because, in the living room of this small space, I have installed a bath. Yes. Dear Reader, a bath. It's not that the room is poorly furnished in other ways. It has armchairs, even a rocking chair, and a couch all facing the sea. But you can lie in the bath and watch the sea crashing on the rocks below or, should you have left your bath until dark, you can watch television and soak at the same time, with bath salts and candles and the whole seductive scene. Decadent or what? (Not, I suspect, if you are actually 40, but at my age?....) However, this is not customary in the region where the flat finds itself and the agent saw it as a really serious disadvantage: "not to everybody's taste." I requested and then instructed him to describe the bath in a positive way to viewers: eg" You can watch the sea etc etc." Not a quiver of response; just another of those 'I've-got-a right-one-here' looks to which I am, after more than seven decades, becoming rather accustomed. I wondered if I could reasonably take his silence for assent. It wasn't. How do I know? I have a confession. I asked a local friend to pose as a prospective purchaser to find out what he would be told. "There's a bath in the living room. Not to everybody's taste". Perhaps it was short-sighted to indulge myself with this bath. When I took the place over, I asked a plumber to come and work out how it could be installed; you know, pipes and things. With his head under the sink in the kitchen bit, he asked "where are you going to put it, then?" " Here", I replied, indicating a space occupied, as I spoke, by some rather awful 'L'-shaped cupboards. Out came his head from under the sink and I got ' the look', but, also, this time, a pronouncement. "You're not from round here, then, " he said, and went back to his pipes under the sink. As it happens, I am from round there, but I didn't feel it would be right to disillusion him with regard to his powers of deduction. And in case you are worried, there is also a conventional shower room,with basin and lavatory, behind a door as it should be.

However, I see that when it comes to it, I do feel better if I can be project manager, with my hand on the wheel, since, at the time, I seem to be the only one who can count to ten . The trouble is, most situations need someone who can count to twenty, at least, and no one could accuse me of being able to do that. What I do seem to be good enough at, though, is seeing around corners and working out alternative ways of doing things, sometims obvious and sometimes, admittedly, a bit off the wall, but, surprisingly, effective.
At this point, you have my permission to add arrogant to eccentric and demanding when making your check list about me. Oh dear, is it too late to reform? Perhaps we should just call me difficult and leave it at that.