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How to ignore old age

2nd December 2007 by Helena 5 Comments  

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.

MarianneLast 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


Filed Under: Women, ageing, blog --> Tagged With: ignore

5 thoughts on How to ignore old age

  • Rupert says:
    3rd December 2007 at 10:13 am

    Give that woman a Mars bar!

  • Laura says:
    3rd December 2007 at 11:06 am

    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.

  • Graham says:
    3rd December 2007 at 1:58 pm

    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.

  • Peggy says:
    3rd December 2007 at 4:56 pm

    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.

  • Sharyn says:
    3rd December 2007 at 7:27 pm

    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.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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