How to ignore old age
My mother has recently started thinking about ageing. She tells me she would rather be dead than old. It’s a fair point. Having just written a book about ageing I know there aren’t many upsides. One is that the hair on your legs grows at a much slower rate. This is probably not much comfort if you’re a bloke. It also does not make up for no teeth, wrinkles, memory loss and a whole host of other irritating side-effects of age. What’s the point in having sleek legs if your face looks like W.H. Auden’s with a hangover?
I do not fear for my mother. She has always ignored the inevitable and will continue to do exactly as she always has done; that is live life as energetically and eccentrically as possible, until she is either arrested or immobile or possibly both. She is a great example.
Last night I saw another woman who has inspired me and made me less fearful of ageing. Rupert and I took the girls to see Marianne Faithfull in Beziers. She was absolutely brilliant. I am not a big concert-goer. I have been to about two in my life; David Bowie and Bananarama. I was reluctant to go, preferring to be tucked up in bed at 10pm, not singing along to rock songs.
But I am thrilled that we went. The girls loved it. Olivia rather sweetly kept waving at Marianne who sadly failed to spot her. She also didn’t hear Rupert’s response when she said “I hope you can understand me, I can’t speak French.” “Say it in broken English,” he suggested.
I had goose-bumps listening to her sing, thinking about her life and what a woman she must be. She really did “drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair” unlike her unfortunate heroine Lucy Jordan.
Marianne Faithfull is sixty-one, almost the same age as my mother. She has lived through drug addiction, Mick Jagger and breast cancer. She has an incredible presence. I felt I was looking at an an icon. There were times when she had to reach for her glasses to read the lyrics. She often took a sip from a mug of tea while the guitarist played a riff. She wasn’t prancing around the stage pretending to be sixteen. But she was having a great time, and so were we.
My point is this. Being over sixty is no excuse to stop doing what you love. My mother knows this and so do I, thanks to her and Marianne.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007
02 Dec 2007 helena
Give that woman a Mars bar!
My mother (66) broke her leg last year as she fell out of a tree, my father (67) went to university after retirement and is graduating in January.
Because of these great examples that ‘age is an attitude’ I also married my husband some years ago (now 68). For the fourth time in his life he’s contemplating moving to another country and starting all over again - ’seen it all here’…
I take their examples and hope to grow old very ungracefully.
Dear Héléna.
When I was a raw young lad of twenty, I shared an office at the Oxford St. end of Carnaby Street (it was the thing to do) which over looked the Marlborough Street Court. I remember seeing Mick and Marianne turning up under police escort for the infamous trial.
Three years ago at one of our Summer lake rock festivals in Nyon, she topped a double bill with none other than… and who else could be her decadent double… the supreme lounge lizard, Bryan Ferry. She was wonderful, not dressed quite as soberly as your snap, but beautifully corseted and Wonderbra’d to the shoulders. She smoked and drank wine throughout the performance.
I do hope Olivia did not understand all of the lyrics, and I thought Rupert’s remark about Broken English astute - if you know Marianne.
G.
Marianne is one fine wreck of a woman! She and her voice are aging wonderfully. May we all be so lucky. She is proof that living well is the best and only revenge.
As a women in her late 50’s I do not think of myself as old or aging. I generally feel the same as I did in my 20’s. Only when I look in the mirror or visit the doctor am I reminded that I am not as young as I think I am. But then, after looking in the mirror, I’ve got to admit that I really haven’t aged all that badly and I really wouldn’t want to to go back and relieve all of the stuff that has happened to me over the years. Besides, the older I get the more outrageous I can become. By the way my grandmother turned 101 this year and she is truly outrageous! I’m just continuing to carry on her legacy.