Who says we have to act our age?

I have just been indulging myself - to the delighted embarrassment of my older son - in a spot of chair dancing to this...



One of the things about getting older is that people stop thinking you want to kick over the traces, let alone that you actually will.  Or maybe that's just one of the limitations I place upon myself, I don't know.  Certainly it's a lot harder to get up the morning after drinking too much the night before, to the extent that generally it's easier to put the brakes on and avoid the hangover in the first place.  But that doesn't mean I don't ever want to go out and get really, properly stinking drunk, sit putting the world to rights until the sun comes up, and dance until my feet hurt.  Likewise, it also doesn't mean I am only ever going to wear a one-piece on the beach, or that I won't at least try on those heels that I suspect will probably make me look like a pig on stilts.  Even if wearing them for a whole evening is an impossibility.

I know, here I am at 47.  I can't help feeling that perhaps I should be over that sort of behaviour by now.  Certainly I would have imagined, when I was 10 - as Boy #1 is - that my mum was way beyond embarrassing me like that.  But lately - perhaps it's the onset of spring? - I am becoming less and less inclined to act my passport age.  Not that I want to completely kick over the traces and behave like the irresponsible 20 something I once was, just that I'm not quite ready to pull on the twinset and pearls just yet.  I still have some confounding of expectations to do.

And if a spot of chair dancing is the only way that feeling manifests itself, well then I don't think things are completely out of control.  Not yet, anyway...

And you - how do you confound those pesky expectations?

Lost: One Friend

I lost a friend. Not today, not yesterday, and not in the eternal sense; as far as I know, she's still out there, somewhere. Scratch that: she's not 'somewhere' - I know exactly where she is. It's just that wherever she is, it's not in my life, not any more.

I don't know why she doesn't want to be in contact. I've turned it over and over in my mind, and am no closer to a real answer. Maybe it was when I did this. Perhaps it was when I said that. It was probably the time I didn't do the other thing. Possibly I wasn't forgiving enough of whatever, or understanding enough of 'that' situation. Or did she just finally lose patience with my attitude to something I didn't even realise was an issue for her? Was I so self-involved that I couldn't see her drowning / moving on / washing her hands of me when she needed me to?

I know friendships are often cyclical. People come into our lives and go out of them when the seasons change; as an expat I see that happen now with alarming regularity. But there are some friends that you imagine will always be present in your life; whether you see them weekly, monthly, yearly or once every 4 years, there's still that bond. The time in between your meetings doesn't matter when you finally get your feet under the same table with a bottle of wine or a cup of tea in your hands, and this friend was one of those.

I have others, of course, some as close and who know me as well as she did. Friends who've also been there for the mountainous highs and the lows so deep that walking into the kitchen cupboard, turning the light off, and closing the door behind me to shut out the static seemed the only viable option.

Thank god, they are still there. But for whatever reason, she's not. And it turns out that some friendships will stay with you, whether they are are active or not. So I think of her, maybe when I'm listening to a piece of music that reminds me of a shared memory (I'm listening to Adele's '21' as I write this and I just know she would bloody love it), and wonder what is happening in her world. I wonder whether it was a conscious act to cut me out of her life, or if that's simply how it turned out, and that I'm just not relevant to her situation any more. I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that question, actually.

From time to time, I wonder if she ever thinks of me & mine. I wonder if she reads this blog. I wonder if she's reading this post. But mostly, I just miss her friendship.

I've been thinking about this post for a while but was inspired to write it today by this piece over at Jane Alexander's Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman

First grey hairs, then this...

How do you know when Middle Age is upon you?

There are many answers to that question (most of them - for women, anyway - related to corrective underwear and the use of moisturiser), but here's another.

You're with friends at a gig, and the lead singer kneels on stage for a moment, stands up again and notices he has chewing gum stuck to his trousers. He curses prodigiously, asking 'Who threw the fxcking gum on the stage?'

It is at this point that middle age hits. What do you shout back? Something cool, witty, or hip? Or:

"You want to put those trousers in the freezer mate - that'll get the gum out for you!"

Please note: this happened to someone else. No, really. Me? At a gig? With a haaaaandbaaag?