These I Have Missed

Having offered you 'These I have Loved' and 'These I have Loathed I felt moved to proceed to These I have Missed   It's perhaps not surprising that there are things  one misses in the 75 not 40 category. One of them, for me for instance, would be my waist. I haven't seen that in years .Arms would be another .Actually, I have seen them but they are a long way from being suitable for public viewing. I simply don't do them so am always on the look-out for sympathetic sleeves. Ankles have also  gone walkabout. I need to choose between a total disregard for skirts or a total disregard for the elderly predicament of no difference in width between knee and foot .As it happens, I do find, as the days hurtle by, that I am less and less troubled by what the eye of the other is seeing so have been out in a dress and fat ankles.

I find I miss longhand. One of my nicest possessions is a fountain pen of such refinement it ranks more as an 'objet d'art' than a wordsmith's tool. There will be those among you who have never filled a fountain pen nor scrawled a love message in blue-black. . However, in a cloud of lost yesteryear I see I have rather romanticised the longhand thing. An error made at the top of a hand- written page incurred a fine of huge proportions: one had to re-write the whole page.However, the advantage of the electronic conveyer of that which must be written down is that what it promises in practical error-removing and re-think possibilities, it loses in malfunctioning. As we speak, the short line curser which shows you where your letters are has joined the nomads so I am having to guess where the print will start and am doubtful about the length of sentences and paragraphs. The Wizard of Cyberspace never interfered in my earlier writing life.

Babies: I miss living with and looking after little people. I miss the feel of a small body against my chest and the gummy, smiley greeting at picking-up time .Truth be told, I miss the absolute sense of purpose the twenty-four-seven -fifty two  the role assumed. I miss good manners and find my own exagerated in a sort of 'yah boo and sucks' compensation. I do know, Gentle Reader, things were always better in the country where one was forty, but I am not the only green-inker who thinks the snows of before were whiter than  the snows of today. With some ruth, I miss forward planning. Recently a television programme I enjoy came to its season's end. Just think, I can see what happens next only,  as a dear, elderly friend used to say when I tried to arrange a meeting for a specific date, "If I am spared, Dear" Bore da