Less chick; more chic

Along with other Baby Boomers, I had no expectations of growing up or growing old. But, one can’t pretend that the indecency of ageing has not been visited upon us. We (especially the guys) look ridiculous in reprised Biba dresses, rock-chick gear or kaftans. Those days have gone.

Recently, I disposed of a leather motorbike jacket which for years I had been pushing up and down the wardrobe rail, but never taking out for a ride (on a bus). I thought, you know what, I can’t carry that off any more. The pinched face collared in a brooding black leather looked pathetic. What that face needs is something flattering, colour-endowing and softening. Not a fucking leather-biker-chick jacket. So, I gave it to a 15-year old Goth.

My purge resulted, also, in the last of my nostalgia stilettos taking a walk. I don’t say it’s slippers for me, but anything toe-mangling and/or balance-disturbing is out. And, don’t get me going on arch supports…

Mirrors and moths

You’ve got to laugh. It’s like being on acid without the nasty side effects. It’s, well, okay, it’s loony.

The other day, I grabbed a book and slapped, with a good deal of venom, a moth. My intention: to kill the moth. I have moths like some people have dust motes. They are everywhere. The moth, instead of being flattened and leaving a dirty smear, plopped onto the floor. And stayed there. I found a pair of middle-aged glasses to check out the deceased moth. It was a sunflower seed.

I laughed. When I made the acid analogy to my daughter, she looked at me weirdly. Or did she? What you see with matured eyes is not always what’s there which in the case of one’s own visage is fine.

Recently, I spent five days away from home. New vistas, new mirrors. Wonderful vistas, but the mirrors were a little shocking for they revealed wrinkles hidden from me by my usual complement of kindly-lit mirrors. I was quite glad to return to my old version of me and to forget the other one I’d spied on holiday.

Synthetic seconds

As you grow older, your relationship to time alters. You’re a bit slower and not so much in the whirl. At the weekend I needed to source some picture frames. I spoke on the phone to four people, all young, working in shops. ‘Bear with me a second’; ‘I’ll put you on hold for a second’; ‘Just a second’, and ‘Can you wait a second?’ In none of these scenarios did a second play out as a second. I remember, stroke of greying beard (no, I don’t have a beard, only in a metaphorical sense), when a minute was more the currency of time.

It’ll take a minute, I’ll see you in a minute, etc. Now it’s speeded up to seconds. But, not real seconds: synthetic seconds. Elongated unreal nonsensical seconds.

Okay, since I’m on this tack. The ubiquitous phrase intoned by every drone you phone: ‘Bear with me’. I mean, where does that come from? What does it mean? What together are we bearing if not more nonsense?

One last dig at phrase making. Going forward. Have you noticed how we’re all ‘going forward’. Politicians and business spokespersons are for ever ‘going forward’. Will we know it when we get there? Or is it a case of perpetual motion?

Sloughs and furrows

It’s worse than I thought. Shirley Temple is 79 not 71. (See below.)

But, then, Joan Collins must be in her 70s and if ever there was a woman who put up two fingers (signifying both victory and up yours) then JC is it. Hallowed be the ground she sashays on. How does she do it? Some will say with surgery. No doubt that has helped keep in check the sloughs and furrows of outrageous time on her face and body, but I rather think much has to do with her spirit.

Although, just to be a little cynical, I do think fat-bottomed bank accounts help a lot: the masseur, the personal trainer, top-of-the-range hairdresser, couture clothes and adulation.

Adulation must help a helluva lot.

Esteemed boiled eggs

I felt odd when I read that Shirley Temple celebrated her 71st birthday this week. Why, it seems only the other decade she was pert and pretty with ringlets, and now she has wrinkles.

You need to have lived quite a long time in order to appreciate, and it’s a boring truism, but time it don’t half fly.

Okay, I don’t feel 20, not even 40 but I don’t by a long chalk feel any connection to becoming 60. Yet, there it is waiting for me. What’s more it is an age that so absolutely defines a person. ‘Cause once you hit 60, that’s it, you’re a pensioner. A bloody pensioner with a bus-pass and a shopping trolley (okay, I’ve got one of those already, but it’s from Top Shop). Next year when I make 60, will I begin to shuffle and to esteem soft-boiled eggs?

Blagging about blogging

I'm in a blog class...excellent teacher: Bill Thompson. I've already learnt a lot more than I knew which could have been written on the back of a box of matches; now it would take, perhaps, the back of a pack of twenty fags. That's progress.

It's a matured-woman thing with me that I throw my arms up in despair at tech stuff, but no longer. They are by my side and I'm determined to cope better.

Like a good wine?

There's a reason for the blog's title. It is that one day trawling around Rye Lane in Peckham which is in south London, I came across a sign in a shop advertising two vacancies. 'Wanted' said the sign, 'One Matured Woman' and underneath that 'One Gentleman'.

For a moment, a heartbeat long, I thought, gee, I could apply. Could but won't. It was a specialist Nigerian food shop and I figured I'd be too skinny for them. They wouldn't want to hire me. Still, I was happy that a business somewhere wanted to hire a matured (like a wine? like a cheese?) woman.

I guess I'm that: one matured woman.