Hello old friend

Picture this. The Albert Hall. Red velvet curtains draped across the back of the stage. Lights go down and the music starts. And the guitar starts to play. Thunderous applause. Clapton singing Hello old friend as he walks on stage. Can my life get any better?!

Hello old friend,

It’s really good to see you once again.

So this could go two ways. Do I do rock and roll and great guitar, or friends and what they mean in life? Music is easy. Who doesn’t like it? Although, having said that I did meet someone once who admitted to never listening to music. She didn’t own a radio or any type of player. Said it distracted her from whatever she was doing. And I mean never. How is that possible?

Friends are more difficult. An elderly man I knew once said that if you can count your true friends on one hand at one time, you are lucky. Does that sound odd to you? I did it and think he has a point. We’re not talking your 349 facebook friends or the people who sit next to at work or join you in the pub on a Friday night. I mean the real friends who know you backwards. People you can tell anything and they don’t judge you. People who you can phone at any time and they really will come if you call.

… ain’t no mountain high enough,

Ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough;

To keep me from you;

Baby if you need me call me no matter where you are,

No matter how far;

Just call my name; I’ll be there in a hurry;

On that you can depend and never worry.

One doesn’t make that many of those in a lifetime. School friends come and go. Besties at play school, everyone at primary, in-crowds at high school, more solid friendships at university. Perhaps. And then you move away or move on and sometimes your friends go but come back again. Years later you bump into someone and they say “Aren’t you so-and-so? I’d recognise that laugh anywhere” and if you’re lucky, you have another friend.

But don’t think this is going to happen at a school reunion! If you’re a woman, you are likely to worry for ages beforehand about how you look and what people you haven’t see for 20 or 30 years are going to think. Have you aged well? Are you successful? How? Where? Most importantly, have you put on weight? Because, let’s be honest, that’s what you’re going to do. This is not going to be about re-connecting with old friends because if they really were real friends, why on earth would you have lost contact in the first place?

Good friends are rare and I don’t think when we are young, that we realise just how important they are. I have tried very hard to instil in my daughter the value of her friends. I have been married twice and one of the worst things after the divorce was losing a circle of friends. As a couple you are part of a group and when you split, the group often decides which of the couple they will continue to mix with. Weird hey? You’d think they would continue to invite both parties separately and let them fight it out between them but it doesn’t happen.

If, as the wife for example, you have allowed yourself to be sucked into your husband’s circle, seeing less and less of your own friends, you will find that you are left with very few come the time you find yourself on the outside of what was once the in-group. So, some advice for free, keep your friends – and your independence. Remember how important they are. Try to always have at least one best friend, even if you can’t make five.

Sing along with Queen. Be happy you’ve got a good friend – who of course may also be your lover …

You’re the best friend

That I ever had

I’ve been with you such a long time

You’re my sunshine

And I want you to know

That my feelings are true

I really love you

You’re my best friend

Ooh, you make me live …

You wouldn’t call me gentleman

Who doesn’t like a bad boy? Is there a girl out there who at some time in her life not been attracted to the “wrong boy”? Whether wrong by your mother’s standards or wrong by what criteria you have set yourself, he is just wrong. And so appealing!

My mother had very fixed ideas on what was appropriate in a boyfriend. I’ve said already that she was the Cliff Richard vs The Rolling Stones type and translated this into her beliefs about what good girls should do and be. The seeds of temptation were planted right there!

At school I met a boy, three years older and everything I had been warned about – tight trousers, long hair, too much money and a great kisser. How did I know this you may wonder? Why ask. He was absolutely everything I had been forbidden and he, just like Lou Bega, was no gentleman

You wouldn’t call me gentleman

If you only knew my plan

You wouldn’t take the chance

To dance with dynamite

But Lou was right, I was so ready to “explode with [him] tonight”. I didn’t but just knowing I shouldn’t made the wanting more.

You go through life with all sorts of social norms swimming in your head – what you should wear, what to eat, who you should and shouldn’t mix with, how you should talk to people in different situations, what looks good or tacky in your house …

Who decided? What do we do out of habit and what is a conscious decision? And even if it’s conscious, is it the right decision? Some behaviours are obviously determined by ethics and values, and so they should be. Others are the result of upbringing and habit. But does that make them right?

Think about your house or your clothes. What is ‘good taste’? Surely taste is fundamentally personal and yet we get judged on it. I think one of the advantages of age should be being able to look a little more objectively at things and other people and value the incredible diversity around us. I think this but I still have to work at it. I have to chastise myself when I think someone looks a bit ‘tacky’ or if I don’t like pink floor tiles and sun filter curtains. There are so many variations on the ‘poor taste’ theme – unseemly, untoward, incorrect, disreputable, unrefined… Notice how many words tend toward the negative. The ‘un’s’, the ‘dis’, the ‘in’s’. One very seldom just says “it’s not my taste”. Behind those simple four words is a range of judgement, and all negative. All slightly disapproving. All thinking yours is better.

So, as I get older, I think I’m going to go back to looking at bad boys. Unfortunately the hair may be a lot thinner and the trousers not as snug, but I definitely want to find one who my mother would not have liked!

I will survive

Is there any woman who hasn’t air pumped at least once when this has started playing? How many times have groups of women swayed to the music, waving their arms in the air, or looked across at another woman while singing and grinned? Conspirators. All understanding just what it is like to wish you’d kicked the bastard out for good at the beginning.

Or maybe not the bastard. Maybe just the person who has brought you more heartbreak than joy. Or perhaps lots of joy but heartbreak too. Who knows and really, does it matter? There will always be that one person that you heave a sigh of relief to see the back of.

And of course, wish that you’d managed to deal with sooner. I have had the feeling often, to different degrees and in different situations. In the work place where I have walked the three sides of a square to avoid seeing someone just down the passage in the office just before the one I need to get to. At a party when I’ve been cornered by the very person I didn’t want to see, and who has positioned himself right by the fridge. Walking down a street, crossing the road to avoid someone, or in a supermarket where you cringe when you hear your name trilled across the aisles.

And even at home. Much as you love your nearest and dearest, don’t tell me you want to see them every day. Or at least, all day. And worse, what if your nearest and dearest are no longer quite so near and dear? Relationships start so well. We have such high hopes and then something starts to niggle. That old story about where do you squeeze a tube of toothpaste and does it matter? Well, yes it does.

Not necessarily the toothpaste, but small things become big things. The trick is of course to notice and to do something about their growth. But we’re not very good at that. Instead, lots of small things begin to add up and all of a sudden, the size of what’s wrong is overwhelming. It doesn’t seem possible to fix and often, you no longer have the will to fix it anyway.

Sometimes the heartbreak is much more sudden and you don’t see it coming. Your perfect becomes imperfect with the sweep of someone else’s stroke and you can’t believe it’s over.

At first I was afraid I was petrified

Thinking I couldn’t live without you by my side

But just like the song, we do get through it and often, get stronger on the other side

… I grew strong, and I learned how to get along

And now you’re back, from outer space

And I find you here with that sad look upon your face.

I should have changed that stupid lock

And made you leave your key …

And that’s the air pump place! You’ve done it.

The trick I suppose is to find someone who really likes you. Not just loves. It could be a friend, a colleague, a lover, a child, a partner. Don’t look for the perfect at all. Look for what is going to be good for you too. As a good friend once said to me “Be the star in your own movie!”

My Baby Takes the Morning Train

From a British 1940’s Communist Party poster that hangs in my kitchen

I bet when this was written it wasn’t intended to turn into someone’s feminist anthem! Probably the opposite but really, have you heard the words?

My baby takes the morning train

He works from nine ’til five and then

He takes another home again

To find me waiting for him

I love it. I belt the words out and a smile comes to my face. Is she really just waiting at home for him every day? Is that her lot in life? That’s it? And yet, look how happy it makes her.

I grew up in a world where just this happened. My mother and her friends did not work, in the traditional sense of the word. They managed their houses and in my mother’s case, the farm, and all that that involved. I do too but I also work and have done so for 40 years. I am sure however that my house looks nothing like my mother’s. I’ve always said that the most positive thing I can say about wearing spectacles is that when you don’t wear them, it’s amazing how much faster housework goes!

But I don’t think that made my mother any the less busy or valuable, especially to my father. What it did do however, was reinforce the ‘women’s place is in the home’ viewpoint. It was a conversation we never had: it hadn’t been discussed in my youth and when she died, I was too young to have gone anywhere beyond the home to learn other points of view. I feel however that she would be the first to tell women today that they should be with their children and they should support their husband, but also that the role women play in the home and the relationship is important. She would have deplored bad treatment of women in any form and expected men to be courteous and responsible in their roles. But perhaps this emphasis on ‘roles’ is the crux of the matter.

Feminism is one of those hot potato subjects. My prospective sister-in-law once told me as I was about to meet my staunchly right-wing Afrikaans father-in-law “Just remember three things: don’t talk politics, don’t talk religion and whatever you do, don’t talk English”! She could well have added “don’t talk about women” because certainly, it was a subject just as fraught with divisive politics. But I do wonder why people still today look askance if you say you are a feminist.

To me, feminism is about power – and choice. Or the other way around? Having choice gives me the power to control my life. I want to have the power to choose my job, to earn as much as the next man for the work I do, to be educated how and where I want to be, and to be treated well as I do it all. This is what equality is all about – the same treatment, the same opportunities and rights, be it in politics or economics, or the social or personal sphere. Why is that considered subversive or divisive? Why does one even need to debate it?

Although perhaps my view of feminism is too moderate. Perhaps I have missed nuances or even basic premises that are all important. I will probably get told so if that’s the case – but then, that in itself is a power and choice worth having. The freedom to debate and to be considered worthy of the debate.

Hey baby!

I’m sure we’ve all had a pure midlife-crisis-reaction experience at some time. Some perhaps less or more than others but don’t tell me that if you’re over a certain age you haven’t felt this just once?

Mine happened the year I turned 50. I went to a party and met a 34 year-old man who for whatever reason really liked me. And we happened to dance to this song.

When I saw you walkin down the street

I said that’s a kind of gal I’d like to meet

She’s so pretty, Lord she’s fine

I’m gonna make her mine all mine

Did it make me feel good? Did it make me feel young? Of course. Was there any possibility of a long-term relationship coming out of it? Was there any reason I didn’t feel this good with myself anyway? Nope. None at all.

So, a completely unfounded gut reaction but to this day, the moment I hear

Heyyyyy, hey baby!

I want to know if you’ll be my girl

I smile.

Why is it that we are hard-wired to seek approval? We seem to need others to accept our decisions and choices. We want people to like us and to seek us out, praise us, even ask our opinions. Why is their approval of us so much more important than our own? And their disapproval so devastating?

I’ve only come to see all this as I’ve got older and am very conscious of the times I look for approval or validation. I’ve learnt that looking or thinking differently is okay. Accepting others as they are is all a part of it too. But learning to take criticism isn’t easy, nor is realising that actually there are people who don’t like me at all!

There is a quotation that goes “In your 20’s and 30’s, you worry about what other people think. In your 40’s and 50’s you stop worrying about what other people think. Finally in your 60’s and 70’s, you realize they were never thinking about you in the first place!” So true – although I hadn’t quite got the stopping worrying part down pat in my 40’s, I assure you!

I continue to read self-help books or articles and try to appreciate myself, win friends and influence people, de-stress my life and think positively. I try to understand what planet a person comes from and am constantly looking for my cheese.

But in the end, I still have to admit, I do get a kick out of being noticed and however much I try, I will look around if someone shouted “Hey baby”!

There’s a kind of hush

I had no idea what unconditional love was until I had a child. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? But honestly, someone once asked me that ridiculous question “would you throw yourself under an oncoming car to save someone?” I mean, really. Why on earth would you if they were stupid enough to run into the road in the first place? But, if it is your child? Then it’s completely different. Yup, I would. No question.

I had my daughter when I was a bit older. 34, which doesn’t sound too old now as so many woman wait to have babies much later in life, but there’s always more of a risk. So I was pregnant in the summer of a very hot 1986 and spent most of my days over Christmas that year wallowing in a pool like a very large hippopotamus.

Then one night in early January my waters broke – honestly, all I felt was relief because it was cool! – and off I went to hospital. Four hours later and I was induced. Ha. I had taken meditation classes during my pregnancy (remnants of my hippie days) and set off with a book, determined to breathe through it all and come out the other end glowing and unscathed but with a beautiful bundle to show off. Ha again. It was agony. My husband fainted and was rushed out and offered tea by the nurses. No tea for me. I simply pushed on (literally) and was finally delivered of a little girl.

I wrote a diary while in the hospital and it tells of my first breath of Katrine. A warm, musty smell and a whimper from a scrunched up little face, and that was it. I was in, for life.

All though her early years I would sing her to sleep. I knew every word of the song …

There’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight

All over the world you can hear the sounds of lovers in love

You know what I mean

Just the two of us and nobody else in sight

There’s nobody else and I’m feelin’ good just holdin’ you tight

And that really does say it. It was just so good holding her. Over the years she grew and I hated it. I loved holding her body and feeling her skin. Now she’s 28 and taller than me but still has the most incredible soft, silky skin. I put it down to her rich and fertile breeding ground and the sheer force of my love for her!

So listen very carefully

Closer now and you will see what I mean

It isn’t a dream

The only sound that you will hear

Is when I whisper in your ear

“I love you forever and ever”

 

Perfect 10

The body beautiful. Just the words evoke such a range of responses. What is, what isn’t, who is, who isn’t, the best, the worst … All really so subjective. That’s why I love this song ..

She could be sweet 16, bustin’ out at the seams

It’s still love in the first degree ….

The anorexic chicks, the model 6

They don’t hold no weight with me

Well 8 or 9, well that’s just fine

But I like to hold something I can see

Of course, it helps that I am definitely no size 6 and struggle to get back to a 14 most days, but am also fairly middle of the road, average, in weight and looks. But I am still really aware of size, despite trying my utmost to not pass on my feelings and paranoias  to anyone else, especially my daughter. I’ve talked about body image with almost everyone I know at some stage, whether about a new diet, a comment on someone passing, a revelation, an admission or an apology. Man or woman, old or young, there are very few people I know who don’t have a preference for appearance. Some are open about what they like, others will say they are not concerned about the outside “it’s what’s inside that counts”, but when push comes to shove and you’re on a dance floor or in a pub with someone standing in front of you asking you to dance or go out, you can’t tell me that there isn’t a little part of you that assesses appearance? Surely?

Maybe you do but put that aside to get to know the real person first. Well, good for you. I can’t. I have no doubt this has made me miss out on some experiences but I’ve accepted over time that I am hot-wired to like a certain type. One has to know one’s limitations (despite yearning for just one more close-up look at a washboard stomach!) but I’ll always go for what I deem to be a general ok-ish type.

I am fascinated by the differences that the human body is capable of generating. Just think of it – two eyes, one nose, one mouth – and it can be put together in literally millions of ways, Identical just isn’t a word in the language of looks. One of my musings involves the possibility of a ‘twin’ somewhere in the world. I simply can’t believe that there are just so many variations. And the fantasy goes further. If there is someone just like me, how different would their life be? Would just the face be the same? Would she (he??) too have aches and pains and cheeks that slip in the night?

Would she have someone who loves her unconditionally?

‘Cause we love our love,

in different sizes

I love her body, especially the lies

Time takes it’s toll, but not on the eyes

Promise me this, take me tonight

When I’m 64

This seemed so far away once upon a time and is now just around the corner. So difficult to believe that so much of my life has already passed. A friend recently made the disturbing analogy of one’s life as a metre stick and if I were to ‘place’ myself on it, I’d be well past two thirds of a way along! How depressing is that?!

But with advancing age comes memories and there are a lot of them. Starting with the actual memories of an incredible era of music – who can forget The Beatles with their weird hairstyles and indefatigable pop-py sound? And who would have thought they’d be so popular? I know the words to almost every song they did and still own one of the original LPs: The Big Beat of the Beatles.

I remember going to church socials in halls and church basements where nothing at all churchy went on. Short skirts, black eye make up, teased hair laden with sticky hair spray. Boys on one side and girls on the other until a song came on you all liked and then you’d move into the middle and dance until someone appeared before you and suddenly became your partner. Slow dancing at the end with lights dimmed and everyone shuffling around and around, swaying to the last songs before your parents came to fetch you. 64 seemed impossibly far away. Even your grandparents weren’t that old!

Ageing is a strange thing though. You don’t feel much older for a long time and then suddenly it seems as if a whole host of things start happening. Your body aches more – where did the new pain in your finger come from? Why can’t you turn the lid to open a new bottle of marmalade? How come kneeling down to garden is so much more difficult? Why do you have to make a three-point turn to get up off the bed in the morning? Why, when do you look in the mirror in the morning, does it look as if your face is made of wax and bits have slipped in the night?

And also, it seems as if it is suddenly time to start making sensible plans. Will you keep on working after 63? (And if so, who will have you??) Will you stay in your same lovely but now a bit empty house? Do you want to keep on living in a vibrant but big, busy, sometimes violent, city? Who will you spend your time with when you move? And what on earth are my hobbies supposed to be? Who ever had time for hobbies when you’ve worked for over 40 years?!

So, what’s next? They’re still there – the hopes and wishes. I still want but maybe it should be when I’m 84!

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?