17 June - Time & Black holes

I don’t know where time goes says a friend I contacted for a catch up and who gave me a few details of where he's been and where he has to travel to etc. I replied thus …

one of my theories is that in previous decades you always meet your mates in largish groups. That a) means you spend less time doing 1 to 1’s with various mates and b) because the largish group has done the same fun/activity together, it means you then have to spend less time telling your mates what you did/where/how/with whom, because they WERE THERE with you, woke up with you the day after, reminisced and processed on the train back, that sort of thing. This on the whole has got to have saved us hours on end at least on the social side of life. And now we only do 1 to 1's because nobody wants to meet in large groups and nobody shares their house with other friends anymore so each 1 to 1 requires a trip to some other part of Landaan.

On the other hand, in the current decade, I give much less time to listening to friends’ dramas. Or put it another way, friends have become older friends and they process their dramas better ie they don’t require you to stay on the phone for hours whilst they cry over the recent split or work issue and also since you’ve only kept your good and therefore few old friends, you know all the variables in the drama so you ‘save’ time in counselling. Any 25 to 39 need not apply.
You’d think these two time consuming and time savings things sort of cancel themselves out but somehow you still have no time! howzthat?

23 December - Death & Parties

Nobody died but nobody I know goes to parties. Our only invite this year was from the lovely and hospitable C and his family over in Shep Bush. We see them once a year. So apart from him, his brother, his wife and his lovely tall, tall kids we didn't speak to no one else. How could we? Why would we? It used to be someone caught your eye or you were told so and so would be interesting for you or vice versa and off you went. But when faced with two roomfuls of ageing middle class peeps and some of their teenage children (bribed as staff to dish out the canapes) the effort seems too much. You're not interested in who/what/why they are and neither are they. There's no one you fancy (the other big pull to talk to someone) or can fancy. Verboten. And because you knew how it would be, same as last year, you don't even make much of an effort with a super outfit. No, a middle boring will do. Why stand out?

In fact at some point Toph engaged said kids. He was talking to the youngest daughter who is tall and therefore he thought she was 15 or so but we discovered she was only 13. Clearly one talks as benevolent uncle, but you also feel a bit silly. So two hours later you escape. In the streets you see other revellers all much younger and therefore having tons of fan going out at the time you're getting into the car to go home. Where did it all go? I could cry.

6 October - Old & Fit

Turning into an old woman. First cackling at Hitchens article in Sun Times review about Martin Amis – couldn’t read this autobio as writing style seems very old fashioned and I don’t know…. don’t like biographies as I always think ‘You werent’ there, how do you now? ‘ or ‘So you asked 25 people who were there, but how do you know they told you the truth about what they really thought/ said/did and why’?

As for biographies, same thing. You know this blog is a sort of bio, yes, but it only holds approximately 10% of what happens daily to me, and it’s self censored in the sense that if I find myself thinking ‘Kill all rabbits and hares, yeah!’ well, I’d be a fool to admit it on the web and then have it come bite me on the ass later on. And also since made the huge mistake of telling a few mates early on of the url, I can't really write the truth of what I think of some of their sorry stories when to their face I was all sympathetic? I mean, it's worth losing friends over a published novel that uses them for characters but not over a useless blog. Darn. Oh and yes, even with the blog as aide memoire I remember not a lot of the past (I stare at old posts where I've used initials for people and I can't work out who the hell they are), so how come drug addled people who did not keep copious diaries (you Mr Richards), how the hell does he remember what happened. Though you could argue that he's only filling 500 pages out of 60 years so that's 8 pages per year on average, am sure maybe I can do that? I mean from the distance? "So, when I was 4 my sister was born - clearly I don't remember shit about it but must have been either pleased or pissed off, let's chose the latter for dramatic sake and invent an episode where I tipped her pram over, that's good anecdote, and so on".

Anyway, I then turn to a tabloid which says that it’s gossiped that both carla bruni and sarkozy are having extra marital affairs and a big laugh escapes my mouth on the crowded escalator. Clearly am mad, because when you're ageing sounds escape your mouth, though nobody turns, not like that time at the Abbey National when the noise of a fart escaped my bottom (no smell, just the noise as I shifted position in the queue) and these two 20 year olds started having fits of laughter and couldn’t stop and the more I stood still looking dead ahead pretending I knew nothing about it, the more they laughed). This is the beginning of the end. Really. Except that for this year, again, I get a totally clean bill of health from recent check up, all orifices and various organs tested though of course there are cancers or aneurysms that go undetected till they blow you off this earth.

23 April - Gardens & Middle A

Yes, if it wasn't just enough to have Toph ring from LA to ask how his clematis is doing and are there any bugs attacking it.. (me, more interested in his recent encounter with Dave Stewart's healer and his claim that by twaking something on your jaw he takes years off you as in fact one Annie Lennox he'd done it to, called him after one of her Letterman's appearances to say that wow, she did look younger on TV, thanks to him), I'm away this w/end and am worried about the new plants in pots since have learnt that they get hot faster than those in the ground/soil, and since it's Ibiza weather, will they all be dead by next Monday?

I mean, since when do I give a f x about plants? Back in '86/7 when I bought my first property I remember distinctly deciding with my cohabitant D. that we would not look at flats with gardens as we were always out day and night and we could think of nothing worse than have to tend a garden and since ours, if we had one, would turn into a jungle in 4 weeks, we steered well away from one. Plus I hated basements and they seemed to be the only ones with gardens attached (of course neither of us had the cash to buy houses, a flat it had to be). So there, get to the wrong side of forty and wooo, coooo, look at them flowers/plants and, I kid you not, I stood and watched a red robin in the new garden for as long as he pecked about the other day. I guess it was the novelty factor or I hope it is, rather than some contemplative state peculiar to the old.

Then again, if that's what they do, time goes faster that way surely. Bit like being doped up. And it's true that I want an old person's home high backed reading chair...
But maybe just buy me a recording studio quality speakers and give me some rave music to just remember I ain't old yet.

20 April - Dementia & leaks

There I was reading the Sunday papers at Toph's flat, around 9pm, since had not managed to read earlier in the day, when someone pounding on the door scared me out of my seat. It was the downstairs neighbour screaming that he had cascading water in his flat and I should go close the stopcock.

That's when I remembered.... that earlier I had started to rinse a little cashemere top ... and there it was, floating in the batrhoom basin overflowing with the tap which I had left running.
After turning it off and dealing with the debacle and a hopping mad Italian neighbour talking to himself about the tragedy I'd caused whilst his every calm Japanese g/friend just got on with buckets, mopping and so on, eventually the water stopped dripping and we'll deal with the damage. Since he's not insured, it's down to me, though one could argue that it's his problem non? But, er, yeah, I'll deal with it. Though to me it looks largely like a cosmetic repair is needed but he thinks the whole ceiling has to come down. And luckily the clothes have not suffered, only the mattress/bed. We're very lucky that a) I hadn't gone out and b) they were in, though best if they had been in bed early and would have noticed it instead of eventually hearing the water coming down/in.

But no amount of going back over he situation has thrown any light on why on earth I seem to have left the bathroom with a job not completed and gone to read the papers. I can't find the link. That's very worrying. My brain/mind has lost the sequence of events. Now I'm scared of driving and all those other things where a moment of forgetfulness can have even more serious consequences...

Or maybe it's just the shock of Toph going off again and not being around to save me from harm?

5 February - 9th Symphony & Void

Clearly it is too optimistic to hope for this wave of despondency to disperse on some shore. If you're ever having negative thougths about anything and you get your period then they'll multiply and drown you. Men probably don't have this added... what's the opposite of bonus?

Going to see Beethoven's Ninth probably also doesn't help. The boyfriend asked me if I found it moving? I was speechless. So he said 'rousing?' and I gave him that. The mood I'm in I find everything pointless and irritating and if Mahler thought he was going to be helpful in re-writing it, so be it. The rapturous applause Mr Jarvi got for his contained conducting seems to point to the fact I was the only morose person there but to stay on the subject of the hands, if you can't use them, you can't drive? You can't wash? Eventually I mean. At which point can I start claiming some sort of disability benefit? And what do the hands represent in those interpretations of ailments/illnesses? Is this punishment for having grabbed or failed to grab something, some opportunity?

Yesterday I was probably one of the rare people who completed on a new property in London and since it's been a rotten journey, all friend were congratulating me. But being in a foul mood means that when you get the keys, you can't even be bothered to go take a look. I didn't. A friend who's a care worker for mad people told me that on the monday of the massive NOT snowfall, she was the only one living near the care home and as such was phoned by her boss who ordered that she goes to some housing estate and check on a patient whose own care worker couldn't reach. L. went off slipping and sliding as she doesn't own snow shoes of any kind. When she got there the patient refused to answer the door and just barked at her to go away. I said in which way bark? And L. did me a convincing impersonation of a barking talking dog. Which was hilarious but also poignant as that's exactly how I feel like talking today in fuck off barks. To anyone and everyone. And I'm not even in a home yet.

Poor Toph is about to depart for not so sunny LA for weeks on end and his last impression of girlfriend will be an angry dog. Hardly what we need. He needs to depart on an image of utter loveliness so he'll miss me and behave himself at pool parties in the Hollywood hills. I have 48 hours to sort the mood thing out. But how?

ps was a surprise though to run into former upstairs neighbour at the 9th. He's a hairy hippy young man who plays in a psychedelic folk band. Plays the piano so perhaps he's classically trained and hence he digs Beethoven. I didn't ask.

4 February - Handjobs

I have some plans ffor stuff I want to do after I'm 50. I always go on and on about pepole (our parents, older relatives) who were going to do this and that after they retired, only to be cut down by illnesses and other unexpected turns which mean their treasured plans have not just to be postponed but simply cannot happen any more.

I can think of nothing worse than not being able to do something I've given a lot of thought about and loaded with desire, so I thought I was being smart in not leaving said things to after I've retired and that in choosing 50 (50 is the new 40 and all that), I was on course.

Ah, but not so. It seems that you really can't second guess ageing. I've recently had one of those top to toe medicals and was very pleased with myself (as indeed I was two years ago) when told that nothing much had changed and everything was working well. Of course I knew of a few things that don't pertain to that medical, ie you know the bunions that will have to be addressed, the carpal tunnel (both hands)that was addressed last year with small surgery, the eyesight dimming and so on. And all that other horrid gunky mess that will be the menopause.

So stone me if I could have predicted that other simple, small things could come between me and my 50 something plans. Right now I have a right forearm that's pretty much constantly in pain and I don't think it's tendonitis. I also have a left thumb that's in pain (no reason, I didn't get it caught in anything) and that can take no pressure, so for example pressing together 2 of those popping buttons on a coat has to be done w/o the left thumb involvement. It means you can't hold down a carrot tht you want to slice with your right hand and you certainly can't do any press ups or downward dogs. It's only a thumb but w/o you you're screwed.

Am yet to go to a specialist about it (GP gave anti-inflammatory ages ago that does not a jolt of difference to either thumb or arm) and so am not yet sure if this will be swiftly cured, but the point is, if it can't (have taken to carrying shopping bags in crook of arm) then what of my plans. I mean, they do involve some rock climbing in the himalayas after all or rowing a boat or carrying my own suitcase or rucksack. Withouth hands you're pretty screwed and you or your man are never going to get a handjob again. He can still get a blowjob but what about me if he's not around?

So there you go. I am now sitting here thinking that those plans should just be carried out when you're 40 at the most. Maybe it's already too late. Maybe not only will you look stupid in a stupid outfit at Burning Man but you won't even be able to take yourself there... I'm in an extremely bad mood about all this. Of course I can still type about it and bore you but if I could thunder like a Greek god I'd urge all ye young people reading this, if there are any, to just go do mad things NOW and never wait under the weight of responsibilities to jobs, family and so on. Just go.

2 December - Boots & Pads

No the boots made for walking but the chemist shop. Tell you what bugs me about age (#754 of infinite things). Having to buy sanitary pads/towels whatever you call them when I don't know when /if the darn thing called blood will happen again. There was an offer of two packets for ££2.00 instead of the individual £1.50 so I wasted 30 seconds thinking I should get the 2 packets or save the 50p and just get the one as it will probably last me a few months at the rate of current menstruation becoming scanter and scanter due to egg shedding being minimal.... It would be fine if it was just a question of blood but it isn't. The mood alters whether the period releases the pressure mental and otherwise.. or not. So you don't really win anything.

29 November - Green eyed

It never ceases to amaze me how territorial I can be. I wouldn't say jealous. I simply try to get rid of the competition as soon as I spot any. The thing is that I do it w/o even considering that the competition may not have any designs on my BF since he's old let's face it, and increasingly looking it (so am I, so am I) and not rich and she, may be 25, pretty as anything and full of the joys of pursuing whatever career she has in mind and not really going to go for old bloke.

But... we had an invite to a new bar opening in Shoreditch courtesy of JR. As I had to wait and meet some other friends and bring them over to the bar/club, I arrived approximately 45 mins after Toph to find him deep in conversation with young (did I say young?) and attractive black girl. Bless, he did introduce me but just as my name and not the essential qualifier 'girlfriend'. I went to the bar and it took me a while to get all a drink but all the while I was watching him and he talked and talked or she talked and talked. When I gave him his drink he told me she's a writer and went back to talking to her. Now, he may be old and attractive only to me but his job means he could still be useful to young nubile writer so I instantly spotted the interest there. Or maybe I just remembered how back in the days I'd have talked to anyone I thought could be helpful in my career pursuits. Now I don't of course as I don't have a career, those days are gone.
So I talked to my friends and still Toph was talking to her so there was no other option. I interrupted him, dragged him a step away and said in no uncertain terms 'Pay me some attention'. Bless, he then found a way to say 'my girlfriend blah blah ' and call me an over reacting old hag but I did see the look on young nubile instantly shifting to register the information. And not too long later she went off to talk to someone else.

Of course Toph was all triumphant later having got a rise out of me and I was left to consider that I flirt with anyone at any occasion I find myself in but can't take it when it's done to me. Awwww... this is pathetic! We're not teenagers or young people so why act like this?

17 November - Maxim

You know, friends are those people you can 'not' see for ten years but it hardly matters. Am out with one such person who's good friends with an erstwhile female friend who dropped me in approximately 1996 and so, sort of lost sight of him too.

I tell him I was recently cataloguing my old magazines for the purpose of selling/getting rid of. He bemoans the fact that living in 500sqm, he has had to give up similar collections though for some reasons he's still hanging on to his Q collection. Anyway, I tell him that I found a Blitz with no cover and pages missing and upon reading the index page it appears that pages 21-24 were an article on Boy George. He bursts out laughing and says 'Christina!' (another good friend from back in 1984!). Yes, he's spot on. More laughter. I guess that friends are precious because only they know.

Another friend who's been living abroad now for seven years, tells me that there isn't a day going by where she wants to tell me something or other but doesn't because we don't communicate in such a frequent fashion and without the regular catching up we would have had in London going out or staying in, what she wants to tell me gets forgotten. But she claim it only has value or even exists if she tells me as nobody else where she is, including husband, was 'here' when it happened and with 'those people' it happened with. So sometimes she thinks up a memory and then it's like nothing ever took place as it cannot be made real (again) by me laughing at the story involving us and so and so. Ok, this above is a bit tortuous but you should get my meaning.

I sort of said that give it ten more years and I definitely won't even know who she is...

3 October - The Wrong club

On a recent night I went to a charity quiz with some friends and then onto the Embassy for a night a friend, RP, was organising there and featuring another friend, G.

I arrived though having missed quite a bit of the action as they told me the guestlist closed at 11.30 and so I arrived then, thinking it would start then! But met her man J again and had a chat also with a very hunky friend of his Richard, who was grumpy though as you could tell he hated just being there on his own waiting for J to leave . I told him to chat to gorgeous N (friend of G) as I knew he didn’t want to be stuck with me and he said ‘If she’d wanted me to sit/talk with her, she’d have made it known’ and I though ‘oh dear, grumpy!!!’ . Then spoke to N who said she thought he was boring. See ? it’s all a matter of where you are in life (N is 30) and she likes younger guys (she’s just started dating a 27 year old who chatted her up at Fabric... sigh!) and skinny , whereas this guy was a 40 year old, tall rugby style man working for an arms company and I'd have been all ears.. Ah well. I left with her at 1 am… some other people there I knew and good at doing introductions but it’s a strange thing.. you find yourself being introduced to Rebecca, Dominick, Annabel and so on and you just think ‘Er.. I don’t know what to say to you’. And they don’t’ either .. so you move on, stand there on your own till your host rescues you again. I can’t be bothered anymore, it wouldn't lead to anything but a fruitless search of commong ground.

Anyway, the evening was notable for the first concrete real sign that my brain is missing beats now. I drove and parked by The Embassy in New Bond St, only for the Embassy not to be there. I walked around the block puzzling before asking a security guard who directed me to Savile Row. And the penny dropped. I was horrified. I had basically driven and parked where the Embassy was back in the 80's when I was there pretty often. This would not be that strange if I also hadn't been to the new location in Saville Row over a dozen times in the last 2 years. So I knew both bits of information but my brain only gave me the information from 15/20 years ago.

This is akin to those old people who go home after the pub and suddenly turn up at the home they lived in with their mum 70 years prior to the home they now shared with thei equally dementia prone old wife.

Worried? moi??????

I told D. all this and we're now starting to refer to these kind of things as 'OLP' old ladies problems as we don't want anyone to read of all this in our emails. Tragic doesn't beging to explain how this makes me feel.

1 September - Freeze & Face

No sooner have I decided on a once in a lifetime experiment, that the world conspires to make me break any resolutions. The experiment is thus: having lots of possessions to get rid of (flat needs upgrade/redecorate) and feeling overwhelmed at the thought of boxes, storing etc, I decided that at least I should not buy anything for a while. I then reduced the ‘a while’ to a month. Seems a 21st century kind of thing to do. The last time I emptied my home was in ’99 and it looked lovely the night before I left it empty for tenants to go travelling. Amazingly, in less than ten years it’s filled up again. This time there’s more ruthlessness and I even got rid of some good vinyl by mistake. A gatefold sleeve lovingly protected in cellophane Selling England By the Pound was got rid of for a mere £1. I think I felt sick afterwards but it would be odd if Genesis still meant that much to me. But there aren’t many albums I once knew the lyrics to and that was one of them.

I digress, so am not buying anything for September, till this particular little moving nightmare is over. I knew I’m likely to see all sorts of bargains, but I also know that I’m a reasonably iron willed person when I want to be. I decided though not to be tempted so am avoiding window shopping or any shops/markets etc. Should be fine.

Then I get a note from the book club girls and apparently we’re reading two this month so there you go… bought them on Amazon, though books are not a problem, I pass them on once read these days. Then I realise that there will be no flights left to anywhere at Xmas so am looking on the net and that purchase may well have to be made this month. Same for theatre, concerts etc. But no buys of other physical things I say.

But what to do? The dermatologist I went to see and who froze the age spot that had chosen to grow on my cheek suggested not 1 but 2 products. One is essential she says, a factor 50plus or 55 if I find it sunscreen which I’ll have to wear everyday because it’s the bloody UV’s that you have to watch out for. And guess what, if you sit under lighting all day in an office for example or you dance in clubs at night, the UV’s will get you. Darn, am condemned to a remaining lifetime of expense to ward off the evil rays. The other product could be optional as it’s some camouflage that they sell in Selfridges and I can use it to cover the now very brown spot that will scab in due time. Or I could use a plaster of course or.. nothing. Am sure both will set me off £50 odd.

Now, then, if my ‘no buy’ policy is to do with money that’s one thing, if it’s to do with space, clearly these 2 things are not going to take up much and I can purchase? But then, could I purchase just jewellery this month? It’s small stuff? Make up is small too? See how quickly you can break the resolve? But no, no, no. you know those clear plastic crates you use for storage? I have 4… full of… bathroom/beauty/hair products. And I don’t buy much stuff, it sort of comes in at night when I’m not looking, it’s left there by ghosts. It never seems to get used up!
Help.

27 August - Concealer

Concealer is my new best friend. I mean, I’ve had the same little pot of Laura Mercier’s for the past 5 years and it’s still full but from now on it will be much more useful to me. Not only do I see deep vertical lines on the side of my mouth, which are not going to be helped by concealer, they more like need restylane but we shall see, but no, I now have age/liver spots. 4 to be precise. . Most people have them on their hands. I have one that’s been growing on my cheek. Such is luck. It is now the size of a pea. And the other 3 are under by eyes and two seem to want to join up. This of course means that it looks like I have dark circles under my eyes, which of course I do. So out comes the concealer. Especially as if I forget to cover the main tache, that’s all that’s looking back at me from holiday photos. Hate it. However, it gets brushed off easily as I must touch my face plenty of times and so… Let’s just say that those potions that promise to fade them, just don’t work. Must ask Michael Jackson for his brand of discolouring cream. I bet it’s not sold in regular salons or chemists.

My doctor is seeing me frequently these days. Always with stuff that’s small - I had a tiny tag removed from inside my lower lip recently for example - and am sure he/she probably just wants to say ‘learn to live with it, there’s much worse to come’. He/She probably thinks that if I’m to take every single thing that’s sure to happen to heart.. I’d be taking up a lot of their time. But I’m a private patient so they have to just deal with it. I must be the only person on the planet that ask rhethorical questions such as ‘but there must be something one can take to stop/delay a decline in eyesight, loss of collagen, loss of cartilage, loss of bone mass’ and so on. But… there MUST BE! And why are people spending time curing cancer, going to the moon and not fixing what I care about?????

10 August - Wrap around

Have noticed subconscious shift in clothes which have changed since weight gain round midriff. Am now buying loose jersey cotton dresses, some are even that boring version of pinafores of yore…the wrap arounds. I’m going older lady, though the provenance is cute Paul Smith’s or plain stuff for 16 year olds at Petit Bateau. In a short space of time I’ve acquired 4 dresses in this shape. It’s fine, they’re sort of euro elegant, can’t go wrong etc, but I definitely see what they do well, ie, make the tummy less noticeable, plus they’re lose so you don’t feel tight on your problem thereby thinking about it more than you already do and, joy, they could serve you well for the next few years of incremental increases. Oh no!

This however seems like a better option (boring) than buying anything recommended in magazines. I have watched on internet the fashion picks for Autumn (or is it next Spring?) – what the buyers are buying from Paris fall shows and I don’t like any out of 34 looks they picked. I guess top fashion buyers get bored and have to pick stuff that appears to be novel, but frankly the stuff is horrendously put together, and even if you took a jacket here and a skirt there, it’s still nothing I like. No wonder I have style but I hate fashion.

4 August - My First Fat Summer

Remember that movie ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’? Well, I have come to think of my mini break in Majorca as ‘My First Fat Summer’. Prior to now, despite various physical flaws, namely cellulite thighs, I have never had a problem donning a bikini. Surely, there’s always been plenty of babes on beaches that I could never measure up to, but I never have had the ‘Oh dear, time to wiggle out of the clothes and be naked’ fear. Hell, back in 2000 I scored the absolutely bestest/handsomest young man on the beach in Haad Rin. There may have been one or two toned Israeli soldiers on leave that gave him a run for his money but I think he was in the top 3. And he was, and will always be a decade younger than me.

But I digress. All this to say that it can go on record that August 2008 is when I finally thought, this is hopeless, this body of mine is just not responding to orders and instead of considering as my peer group the 30 somethings, I know only had eyes for the 50 and 60 somethings looking either fat and plump or fat and saggy or worse, skinny and saggy. This being the north posh side of Majorca, some of these women were ‘nice’. But the best remaining thing about them was probably their hair. How often has anyone walked behind a woman with lovely hair and thought she was 30, only for her to turn around and it’s your mum? When one is in a bikini, there is no such surprise, the body below the hair is what you see, an old body. Maybe I am weird but few things horrify me more than that sagging skin women (and men) get on their backs below their bra and on their waist viewed from the back, even the slim ones. Thank god for easy tanning skin is all I could think, at least I was not bloated and white, but merele a water retentive body in a soft, nice hue.

Clearly nobody else cared about me as much as I do. Toph’s standard reply is ‘You look great for your age, better than lots of women younger than you are’. Which is nice, but it’s besides the point. There may be an element of staving off return unspoken criticism in any case as he (and our host friends) also are no longer the shape they were ten years ago. By which I mean, if they’re nice and complimentary about me, I’m less likely to say ‘jeesus, can you do something about the manboobs and the pockets of fats that are growing on the side of your waist?’. I seem to have little patience for people who simply pick at the fat and vow to do something about it but then go grab another beer from the fridge.

But it’s true nobody seemed as tormented by these thoughts as me. Add to this my friend’s son who’s 11 and tall and perfectly tight inside his skin as a boy that age is, and I was pretty much having a Death in Venice moment every day. When we were sat drinking and eating our tapas one evening in the square and son was engaged in an impromptu game of football with a bunch of other kids around his age, I was practically ready to cry at a sort of ‘It’s all gone, gone, gone’ mood that took over. It seems most of my peers just drink another glass and eat some more and think it’s not worth the fight. Maybe there isn’t just the Tibetan Book of the Dead to read? Maybe if I searched on Amazon there would be an entire sub section to console me? I thought the TBOTD was about accepting death but perhaps it has handy chapters about accepting the 50 years prior death that you’re still living, but not in the package you liked?

I wonder if it’s much different for people who always had the hung ups? Do they notice less? After all when an ampler g/friend heard my concerns about the mini spare tyre she said she’s always had one so it’s not something she’s just had to notice now?

Anywway, before anyone says 'body dysmorphia' to me... I have checked the symptoms and to be honest I only have two: - Obsessive thoughts about perceived appearance defect. and - Compulsive skin-touching, especially to measure or feel the perceived defect. So am not depressed about all this yet, just annoyed, so no need to check with a head shrink yet. I'd rather spend the money on lipo dissolve or something... HA HA.

3 July - It's not true that age is only a number

God the loneliness of it all! (see 25 June for a timeline of this new obsession). Seems that besides my best friend, 46 year old C. who’s sadly situated by way of marriage in another country and so is not available for daily misery exchanges, I will have to face this ageing drama alone. C. says that where she lives, they’re all in denial and go anorexic to counteract any effects of the drop in oestrogen levels. That’s too drastic for me. But at least she sympathises as says she looks six months preganant. Me, am about three I'd say.

My youthful slim 51 year old London friend R. rang to say that she’s still having her periods and so has not experienced my fat stomach symptoms yet. Ah, the injustice, the lottery! And my 56 year old friend R. is clearly over whatever it is that happens and cracks jokes about the size of her girth. And my 43 year old friend L. said that it’s typical of my ayurvedic type to kick against the passage of time when I’d do best to just accept it. And my 41 year old friend D. said she’s no idea what am talking about but as she’s on anti-depressants she’s gone up a size already.. My 48 year old friend D. keeps drinking wine and not facing the bulge increase. My 49 year old friend P. just writes back ‘You’re beautiful and you’ll always be’ But I don’t believe her. My 42 year old friend M cheerfully says she's had a fat stomach all her life and so will be unconcerned. I could go on.

I’ve cut out the alcohol, as first source of sugars that can go but it’s hard because am surrounded by people who like a drink and I’m out all the time and can’t keep drinking water. I’ll have to pretend to be AA to make it stick.

The internet is full of what to do when you’ll have full on symptoms and can go on HRT but I don’t have any of those yet, only the fattening. Well, am not laughing. It’s like having puberty again. Remember those feelings of ugliness just because you had spots or sweaty glands? Those thoughts that run on a mono rail thinking thing, you know just the same one practically over and over? Well it’s like that. I just think all day long ‘oh my god am getting fat for no reason other than my ovaries have dried up and all the plump from my face, my tits is just going to deposit itself on my tum and my thighs’. I feel like I have fat legs just sitting on a chair. I feel the flesh spread out on the chair seat. I keep holding my thighs in my hands and just feel the fat oozing. This has to stop. I go for a jog on the treadmill and I practically see a duck in the mirror waddling about where my body should be. This distortion is taking hold. And to top it all I can’t do a mile in ten minutes, I might as well be walking. Not that I was ever much faster than that though. Nobody understands as they all say you look the same to me. Except Toph who can’t argue when I show him my protruding belly. It’s freaking me out like some bad trip. And I never did those.. (or one …)

If that wasn’t enough am getting up every day and the skin round my eyes is sort of sore, like it was thinning. This is bizarre. And I’ve never needed concealer in my life and now have these age spots forming right there underneath, where they look like dark circles. There’s a few beginning to emerge and if they join up all together it will look like I’ve been punched. None on the top of my hands though. Darn, I’d rather have them there, that’s more normal.

Ah the rage! Maybe some hypnotherapist can make me visualise something else other than old crone approaching?

25 June - Age & Spread

Jesus, don't know if the two things have anything to do with each other but isn't is strange that having had to halt exercise for the hand surgery, my body has decided to start showing me weight gaining all of a sudden? I mean, I am sedentary, but I still walk. However, if this is simply that age thing that's meant to happen when your peiods stop, and by doing exactly the same as you ever did, eating the same etc, you start to put on a couple of pounds a year around your waist, then clearly my life as I know it is over, I will get depressed about it, I'll feel like shit and I'll be a pain in the ass moaning about it endlessly?

What to do? L. says I should just accept it as it's going to happen eventually to all. But I say no no no. Over my dead body, though without recourse to the paraphernalia available to the rich, it will mean starvation till the bloody hormones heed! And that won't be much fun either. Step one, out with any alcohol. step two, get the juicer out. Fine till then, but step 3 (more exercise) step 4, no chocolate and the like, step 5, fasting 1 day a week, is just too depressing. L. says 'but you look nice a lilttle cuddlier!. Fuck! it's only been a week and she thinks I've gone cuddlier? This is so not on!

Later on I run into 51 year old R. and don't initially recognise her as she'd dyed her already short hair into an agyness dean/pixie geldof peroxided crop. She makes me feel not all is lost as she's a paragon of youtuful slimness. But she could of course not be quite on the other side of the menopause yet, having had 3 children, maybe it hits one later? Can't ask but she reads this I think, so let me know.
In the meantime, let's dial the gyno and start asking those questions I thought could wait till 55. Oh Fuck!

4 June - Kids & Parents

Back for a visit in the hometown. This entails a Saturday night dinner with the friends I grew up with. Some are my original friends, the others are the partners they acquired, often after I'd left home to go study/work, but in most cases back when they were teenagers (you know, small towns breed those kinds of relationships) only we probably never went out together as a group this much.

Over the years they've instituted a sort of tradition whereby, besides meeting regularly here and there, they go out for dinner at the weekend. This is usually at a great restaurant on the edge of town, owned by the cousin of one and the brother in law of another so it's extended family anyway. The tradition further states that they're in a separate room when possible so as to talk louder, be more free to deal with the kids and also that the adults sit at one table and their children at another (obviously not when they were infants and would be on parents laps). This was further subdivided with men at one end and women at other end of table. It's still possible to converse across the divide, as the group would be 5/6 couples at the most. It's kind of a good way when you think about it as you never have to worry about your partner being deep in conversation with one of your friends and giving rise to unncessary jealousy. And the kids only bothering you for requests (have finished, can I go out and play?) meant that you can have some adult conversations. These restaurants are always on the edge of town and kids can play outside in courtyards etc. plus there's always a smoker or two to keep an eye on them. The system also works well when a husband or a wife is away on business and the alone partner can still avail themselves of the group/ease the tension of minding the kids.
The tradition further dictates that the wife alone, gets her dinner paid for by the group. Over the years I've attended with boyfriends and also solo, in which case i was the guest. ahhh.

This is not for everyone though. I introduced a good friend to the group and she married one of them, but coming from the city, she found the sex divide very annoying and not a bit macho. She wanted to talk to the boys too, not be relegated to the women. I had to explain that there was freedom in the separation, a bit like when you were in same sex school and did much better as a result. Plus 50% of the guys conversation is about football/sports and you can live without that.

However, the women only exchange real personal info away from this table, there are friendships within friendships and no one wants to air dirty linen in this public as it's still a small town and they're all business owners (sometimes in same field cometitive environment) and some gossip would be detrimental to business, but there's support in the opinions expressed and examples given. And all are equal despite being rich and... very rich. If you exclude me, but as the one who lives far away, I'm excused as having chosen city/fun over personal wealth improvement.

These as I've said, I’ve known all my life. The change this time is that none of their kids are at dinner. Finally after all these years, they’ve flown the coop. They're 16 downwards, and the youngest is 8 or 9 and at granny for the evening.
My visit coincides with schools' out for the year and the kids are out thronging the pizzerias to celebrate and/or at other kids' parties. The mothers express good feelings vis a vis now being back to the adults except for my local best friend. A woman obsessed by her kids and who in answer to the 'how are you?' question has always steered the conversation to her daughers. She would like her two (16 and nearly 13) to stay kids as long as possible. I have no idea how she's going to cope when the youngest will also get a boyfriend and starts hanging out elsewhere. I predict bad adjustment as she has no major interests outside the family.

This is in contrast to her husband who has always travelled far afield for work and who's busy telling Toph of his preoccupations with age. He looks good A. mainly because he's as thin as a rake and runs a lot so he's fit. I think he tries too hard but the contrast with the non runners at the table is vast. They're bursting out of their shirts and not turning 50 very well. But he tells Toph that earlier in the evening, 16 year old daugher's 17 year old boyfriend came to collect her and that he, father, had on exaclty the same clothes as teenage boyfriend and surely it's time to look one's age but he's not ready. He likes his Brad Pitt style outide the office. I am positioned on the edge of the male side of the table so I can eavesdrop more. He moves on to feeling a little dejected that now it's dawned on him that he would not be getting a shag from a 25 year old if he tried, or maybe he'd just get one out of pity/sympathy. I'm about to interrupt and say he'd get one out of cash as he's loaded but I stop just in time as his wife is opposite me and there's no reason to offend her.

I personally think it's rude on his part to discuss these kind of things however implausible or hypotetical, when your wife is in earshot. But I also think that I've more in common with his attitude to life than hers, as she plans one last holiday with her daughers alone (no dad) on some seychelles style island. I mean, that's her fantasy, there's nothing to do for a teenager in such a place.

3 June - Counting back the years

Well, there is a god and it means that my concerns with ageing can be shared with more than the blog. I don’t wish to dispel any mystique I have with/over the lover, so he’s certainly not getting all of my reflections (sorry, whinges) about the ghastly process, but it’s good to know that Toph is feeling the years too. Says if he had a newspaper column he’d be writing about it. HA! Where has he been? Of course there already are male columnists chartering their journey to middle age, plus comedians and other writers. But who knows, maybe he has a unique view of it. After all we’re both slightly peter pan-ish in looks that don’t reflect the actual years (yet).

I told him he should start a blog or that I’ll give him his own guest spot on mine, but then I’d have to know exactly how bad he feels about it all and that may be detrimental to his mystique. I mean, there will be a point where instead of letting me cut off the white hairs on his chest, it will be a losing battle because they’ll outweigh the black ones and we’ll just give up (you didn’t know he was vain that way did you? But the poor ‘boy’ has to disrobe often enough at his yoga babes sessions)… I mean, he’s already using the Strivectin face cream I told him to get in the States, but now he’s adding it to his neck as he says he wakes up with these diagonal lines on it. I didn’t have the heart to say I’ve noticed the lines long ago.. and yes, don’t just do the face, extend moisturizer to neck, rule no… 6 of taking care of skin. I could go further and mention that there’s a little wobble appearing under his chin, and what with being so skinny he has more of a chicken rubber neck than I’ll ever will. But that would be cruel and unnecessary. Wonder what else troubles him about the process. Will let you know. In the meantime I should borrow some library books about cultures where male ageing is less of a problem. Don't know.. native american indians perhaps? They looked pretty foxy all grey haired and sinewy...

1 June - Wrong Trousers & Libido

I bought a size 6 american DKNY cotton trousers in a second hand shop – without trying them, they were a bargain so I just grabbed them as you do, and got confused as am an American 4. So when I got home they hung low on my hips and were extra long. I was considering who I could pass them on to amongst friends/colleagues as even shortening them would take time, and then I thought, no I’ll keep them for when I get bigger due to not too far away menopause.

It seems none of my older friends have avoided the horrible thickening of waist and protruding belly associated with the ‘change’ (what a farce, you’re past releasing eggs that make you pregnant and you end up with a permanent 4/5 months pregnant type belly, it’s a joke no?), and am assuming that I’ll be plenty punished for my years as a body fascist and will get the mother of all stomachs. Uhm, which would I rather have? Huge stomach and increase in waist up to two sizes but libido left intact or the other way round? Bloody hard call. I’d rather do the De Niro roulette in Deer Hunter than decide on this hypothetical quandary. But in fact I don't have to do anything, family dna will do its worst, though aunts not too badly shaped now they're... 70!

So that’s it, my subconscious is already preparing for the inevitable in my usual practical way. Other people buy smaller sizes for when they’ll lose weight and return to the dreamlike size of themselves as 18 year olds, and instead I’m beginning to stockpile clothes for when I’ll have to let it all hang out. Is this … deranged?