making fifty-something fabulous

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Do not go gentle into that good night while it is still late afternoon. Sheesh.

Tripped over another of those pious, infuriating, now-we-are-fifty “prepare for death good people”  posts today which have irritated the crap out of me for years. Before I was fifty, especially in my tiring forties, I owlishly believed come the dread fifties one must take to a rocking chair and with good grace and gentle regret watch the sun setting on our lives. Sunset shmunset. Late afternoon is awesome, sunset is blazing with colour, and after that comes the evening and THEN, okay, prepare for the good night but that’s hours and hours away.

Walking In The Late Afternoon Autumn Sun High-Res Stock Photo - Getty Images

I’ll tangle my metaphors further, why not. Late middle age is autumn, not winter. Autumn can be, sometimes is, blustery and challenging, but it is also mellow afternoon sunshine, respite from the heat of summer, favourite season of many – as in the year, as in life.

Hands up if you love late afternoons, sunsets and the promise of the evening: if you think that autumn is spectacular: do you apply that to the context of your own life?  Too many say, and believe, I’m old now. Losing my leaves. The light is going. Must be winter. Nope. Not yet. Enjoy the season to its full, and let winter wait its turn.

If at 30 we said sadly we had peaked physically, so it was time to give up all sport and exercise because what’s the point, we’d be howled at. If at 45, when we have reached our productive peak, we said that’s it, I shall stop trying at work now, those older and much higher up the corporate ladder would be aghast. And yet at 60, those who say I’m studying a new language, have taken up a new sport, am painting, am going to travel on my own because no-one else wants to visit the place I have always wanted to see, etc etc etc, our own generation ask if that’s wise, at our age, when there’s that nice rocking chair out on the porch instead.

If you, having read this far, have said to anyone (or even thought) they were too old, when they were clearly capable at least for now, did you really believe that, or are you simply groomed to fixed expectations by their age? Time is flying, yes. Older friends and relatives will have to start trimming their sails, yes. Tick tock. Now is more important than ever before, and maybe that’s why it is such a thrilling time and why, if you have the energy, the desire, and the funds, the freedom to do it, you should be cheered on, not anxiously cautioned. Carpe diem. The rocking chair will be there in 10, 15, years, when we can enjoy sitting in it to look at the stars.

Of course the motivated ignore the faint disapproval from family and even friends and go ahead and do it anyway but crucially don’t talk about it much because they are bored with being judged. Many are simply too busy to tell the burned-out forty somethings wilting in summer how awesome autumn will be.

I know the friend who reposted the pious ‘count our blessings as life nears its ends, we the over fifties’ has enjoyed a riotous autumn, meeting the love of her life, taking up cycling and winning races, running in half-marathons, and eventually uprooting and moving a thousand miles away where she is now successfully running a business with new skills learned in the last few years, and trying to meet kindred souls who are equally loving their so-called leisure years. She must have been having a pensive day, or be feeling a bit down. Of course there are down times as well as up – when not, in life? but remember, said good people, there IS up, bags of it, and more of those enjoying it should be grooming those following behind to know what to really expect. Autumn is awesome.

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Wow, you know so much!

It’s a great feeling, reaching the age where you know everything.

Okay, not EVERYTHING. But everything you need to know, and a little bit more.

Make the most of that age, treasure every minute

Hard on its heels comes the age where you confidently share your wisdom unasked, in every situation, because that’s only fair, and you are a Priceless Resource.

Then comes the first time someone says ‘that’s not right’ and you check and it wasn’t. What? But – but – but

 

 

 

 

 

Told you to treasure it  rolling on the floor laughing

We learn every day of our lives until we die, and if we did shut off that wonderful gift, we might as well be dead. Blush and move on.

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Are you a glowing autumn rose? How-To meet a Mr Will-Do-Nicely … coming soon.

A couple of the reviews on Rainbow, while friendly enough, remarked they had bought the book thinking it was a guide to flourishing as a mature single. Well, in a way it was, the men (and women) Dorothy came across were exaggerated for fictional purposes, but they are distinctive types to be found on every website for mature singles.  A small cross-section in a very large field, you could say.

I’ve written blogs about the types, and I certainly had plenty of material. Write another novella, pulling in more types, and more advice? Or do a how-to book?

I went with the how-to. Well, I went with two. There’s one coming out On Meeting Mr Will-Do-Nicely, and there are times you’d think I was trying to keep all the single mature men to myself, it is so crammed with cautionary tales. I’m not, honestly! The fact remains that most of them pass from hand to hand like hot potatoes (leaving burned fingers in their wake) because eligible men in their fifties and sixties, especially the ones who have been single for a while, are a whole new ballgame.

So why even bother, risk being hurt, heartbroken, scammed, poorer but wiser?  Because we are gorgeous, and still fizzing with life and adventure, and forewarned is forearmed. Go have fun. Do no harm.

As I wrote Mr Will-Do-Nicely I kept adding bits of advice I’d been given, or discovered for myself, which have nothing to do with dating and everything to do with making the best of the totally unexpected surge of energy and sunshine suddenly lighting up life and turning us into autumn roses.  It’s an odd reality that women in their late forties, even early fifties, menopausal and irritable and mourning the loss of fertility, are the most resentful of our Indian summer. You’re how old? You cannot be feeling healthier, fitter, more interested in sex and life generally, than we are, we feel old, you are old!

Ooooh, ffssssssssst.  Whether they like or not (well, they don’t) you can feel better than them. You do. They’ll find out, if they can shake that attitude. Sometime after the menopause the rush of life comes roaring back, for at least a while, and it is wonderful. It is so easy to waste it, with the wrong mind-set. Eventually I’d added so many notes about that it was diluting the singles book. So I moved them to another, On Perfecting The Indian Summer.

Am I an expert? No. Qualified to give advice? Only by experience. These aren’t books that order you about, lay down the law, they are How-To books based on reality.  I’m in my late fifties, I didn’t expect the Indian summer myself, and I did waste the start of it. I briefly joined a mature singles website to research one of my whodunits (Five Six Pick Up Sticks) and later I joined another for Nine Ten Begin Again so I could ask some fairly direct questions, and eventually I wrote A Second Rainbow. I’ve had a lot of fun, in the name of research, along the way. As for the Indian summer itself, I’ve met many women enjoying the sunshine, including my own half-sisters over a decade ahead of me in age, and they’ve all been generous with sharing advice. I played with the subject, in Eleven Twelve, where I called it the gloaming, and that put me in touch with more autumn roses. There are a lot of us quietly out there.

It will be interesting to see how the books do but if a single reader, just one, enjoys herself more as a result of reading either, they did their job.

Out sooooooooooooooon

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Virtual friends – part two –

On the costa del sol March 2016 A couple years ago I did a fairly breathless blog saying I was about to fly several thousand miles to meet someone I had been talking to on line for several months. I hadn’t a clue, I gushed, whether he was my long-lost twin brother, my best friend, or my future.

Well, none of the above, as it turns out laugh  although we’ve stayed friends, but on the strength of that meeting having been interesting, I flew off into the blue again last weekend. This time I was going to meet four strangers – two men and two women – who were not only strangers to me, but to each other. Age range, forty-something to the sunny side of sixty.  Why not? Safety in numbers, a gathering on the Costa del Sol, and two of them had, over the past year or so, made me cry with laughter with our brisk on-line banter. Three of them live there year round – one previously Australian, one a Londoner, one from Southern Africa – and the fourth was holidaying in the general area for a week from Ireland.

I say the general area, Spain is HUGE, but they would all be within an hour of each other. I suggested, rather enviously, that they meet up. Go ON, I urged. Tell the rest of us what you’re like. Okay, they said, you come too. Eek no, I said, I couldn’t – then I thought of all the advice I give on my blogs about getting out there. So I went. Taking, it must be said, some fairly Scottish weather with me. Coldest week they’ve had this winter!

SUCH fun. I’ll say right now that you have to pick your company, we’re talking mature single men and women here, they could have been gloomy and weeping into their second drink, we could certainly have exploded our virtual friendships into smithereens, I knew all of that. I’ve written loads of blogs on that, on what to expect. And yet – when would I get such a good chance again?

I knew the Irish woman would be worth meeting, whatever happened, even if she had needed elephants to carry her emotional baggage, (she didn’t) because she is both clever and howlingly funny. We’ve been giggling on the blogs for over a year and virtual is virtual, sure, but you cannot talk that much and hide the sort of person you are, over that long a time. I didn’t have a clue what she would look like – you don’t have to have a pic up, and she chooses not to be recognisable. Turns out, fantastic hair, fantastic skin, taller than me (I’m not used to that, men or women) and she annoyingly looks way nearer 30 than 50. I would have hated her if she hadn’t been such good company.

The other woman startled me by being absolutely tiny, I somehow expect Australian women to be strapping tanned Amazons with a surfboard tucked under one arm. I know, I know, but I worked for the company that marketed Fosters in the UK for many years. You get brainwashed. She’s a dynamo of energy, more fluent in Spanish now than in English after 30 years there, and herded us briskly around for the weekend like a tiny border collie working a herd of rather laid-back sheep.

I’d chatted on and off for a year on Skype with the oke from Southern Africa, so I was pretty sure what he would be like, and he was exactly as expected, another tick for using skype to talk to strangers, a very nice guy, and without his organizing we’d probably never have got the plan past wishful thinking into reality, despite all of Titch’s energy. One-time army men who now run their own businesses are good at organizing!

I’ve exchanged messages with the drily-witty Londoner for even longer, he’s even (unknowingly) featured once or twice giving advice in these chronicles, but he’s had the same pic up since I joined the website and we had no idea what to expect. Ten years older than he said? Five inches shorter? That’s pretty standard on singles websites, but it didn’t matter, this wasn’t a dating-type meetup. (He turned out to be exactly what it says on the box, that was a first!)

It really was fun. We ate a lot, drank gallons of coffee and a little alcohol, and talked and talked and talked. I didn’t get to bed before 3 am on a single night. At least twice before I set off I would have cancelled out of sheer nerves, but I was used to that from my first venture, we never met without me having a mini meltdown beforehand. Apart from anything else, any reader of this column knows I don’t much like flying.  grin However, carpe diem is one of my mottoes. If not now, when? is another.  Not to mention the less thrilling, if more prosaic, you aren’t getting any younger. So much for that one, I felt like a yearling all weekend. It was great.

Do it. Seize the day.

Ever researching on your behalf,

Elegsabiff  wave

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I remember, I remember – actually, I don’t

There’s a joke doing the rounds on Facebook, which says ‘If my memory gets any worse I’ll be able to plan my own surprise party’

I’d probably then make other plans for the same night. sigh

 
My favourite cousin is having a milestone birthday down in That England later this month. Eight hour drive. No worries, count me in, wouldn’t miss it.

 
A good friend here in Scotland is having a milestone birthday later this month. Great, count me in, wouldn’t miss it.

 

Same day. I really should get a diary.

 

I was getting quite depressed about these little moments until I realized how many other people (all ages, yay) are having them too. What can we blame? Solar flares? The internet? ADD brought on by social media? I’m not looking to sue anyone, just to avoid getting worse!

 
Please make me feel better, tell me what you forgot. If you can remember.

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Hi ho Silver! guidelines to making your Indian Summer the best it can be

If you remember Silver, chances are you’re a baby-boomer, fifty-plus (plus plus) and enjoying being this age far more than you ever expected. You should. Indian Summer is one of the most unexpected gifts of our lives, and some of us are so taken aback we don’t make the most of it. I wasted the first couple of years, for sure, but now I’m fascinated by all this unexpected lovely sunshine and making the most of it. Check the list below to make sure you are too …

  1. Splurge occasionally. Buy the best you can afford for those you love, but include yourself: treat yourself to something you’ve always wanted to do.
  2. Take pride in your appearance. This is an oddly invisible age, it’s easy to slip into thinking no-one is looking so why bother except for special occasions? Actually, more people are looking than you realize. Haircuts, manicures, good dentistry, make you feel surprisingly good. Ignore the sillier fashion trends, but keep your own sense of style. It’s part of who you are. Your health – ah, now, your health is priceless. Do moderate exercise, eat well and get your sleep. Keep yourself in good shape. Your summer will be the longer for it!
  3. SING.  Sing as loudly as you can, whenever you can. If you haven’t done it for a while, the creaky croak may be a shock, all the more reason to sing more. Fantastic breathing exercise and it will keep your speaking voice strong and vigorous for the rest of your life.
  4. Lovely quote from Mark Twain: ‘I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Yesterday has gone, and tomorrow has yet to dawn. Enjoy today, and don’t stress the small stuff. Do a Scarlet O’Hara. Leave it to tomorrow.
  5. You want dogmatic, ask a forty-something! It’s time to outgrow that. We’ve had fifty years and more to learn that no matter how we push, the world continues to turn, but we also should, by now, know that there really is more than one way to look at life. If you aren’t already a convert, social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on – can be lively, and you could meet up with long-lost friends. Keeping in touch with what is going on, staying interested, is important at any age.
  6. Never use the phrases ‘I can’t do that any more’ or ‘I’m too old’ or that terrible one, ‘In my day.’ Your day is now . If you really feel it is time to give up physically challenging hobbies like playing squash at league level, or training for Iron Man (and since older footballers are now discovering walking football, are you sure your hobby is too physically challenging?) find new ones. You can travel, hike, cook, read, dance. You can adopt a cat or a dog, grow a garden, play cards, checkers, chess, dominoes, golf. You can paint, write, volunteer at a local charity, become a collector of odd things that fascinate you, discover the joys of model planes, trains, helicopters. Find something you like and have fun with it.
  7. Always keep love alive. Love life, love your family, love your friends, love your neighbours. If you’ve been offended by someone – forgive them. If you’ve offended someone – apologize. Don’t drag around resentment with you. One thing we should have learned by now, it doesn’t matter who was right. I can’t remember who it was said that holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die, but it’s true. Forgive, forget and move on with your life.
  8. We’re in an age of change. Old friends move away, following their own dreams of living abroad, or are lost to you, and the thought of replacing a thirty year friendship with someone new is, yes, daunting. Don’t grimly go searching for new friends. Instead, find new things that interest you. Meetup.com can offer some options you never even thought about before. In the process you’ll meet others who share at least one of your interests. Friendships are like weeds, they grow in the most unexpected places.
  9. If you are a talker, talk less, and listen more. If you are one of nature’s listeners, talk more! A change is as good as a holiday . . . be less critical, more open. Remember your mother telling you if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all? Well, modern conversation doesn’t work that way, but you don’t have to be mean to be funny. There’s a knack to it. So they tell me, anyway.
  10. If you hold strong beliefs, enjoy them, but don’t waste your time trying to convince others. Live true to your beliefs, and respect the rights of others to theirs.
  11. Take no notice of what others say about you and even less notice of what they might be thinking. Let them talk, because no matter who you are and what you do, someone will disapprove.
  12. Laugh a LOT. Laugh at everything. You’re a survivor, you’ve somehow muddled through to reach one of the best times of your life, and you’re being rewarded with this Indian Summer. Enjoy it!

I borrowed a lot of this from my mum’s only surviving friend, who is roaring into her eighties in an extremely inspirational way and who emailed me her Golden Age rules, without telling me who wrote them. If you are the original author, thank you for some lovely stuff, and please get in touch so I can credit you here. And apologies to the liberties I took, converting your 21 rules to a dirty dozen for Silver Age* life!

*Still haven’t learned whether the perfect name for us Indian Summer people has been coined yet.

 

 

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Raining men – are you ready steady go? A one-month plan to brushing up nicely.

Men are like buses, you wait ages and then five come along at once. I’m not going to bore you to death with my sudden popularity because really when it comes down to it these moments do happen every now and then, and ten minutes later you glance round complacently and the buses have all departed again.  Still – five buses? It’s raining men.

Bus number one is a younger man, talk about a terrific ego boost.  Almost on the spot, too, so the Edinburgh Festival saw me a bit more out and about than I might otherwise, especially in such a hot August.

Bus number two is a long-time friend from way back who is gorgeous, eligible, newly on the market, and coming up to Edinburgh for a long weekend shortly with a view to relocating.

Bus number three is a lovely widower living on an island far far away but originally from the nearest town to the fictional Onderness, the beautiful Linlithgow. We’ve been talking through the website, and he’s popping back to visit family shortly: drinks date planned for near the end of September.

Bus number four is from the singles website, living in Spain, has been a fun correspondent for several months as well as guiding me through the shoals of sharks on the website. I’m off to Spain to visit my sister at the end of September, and a lunch is planned with several website correspondents, all meeting for the first time. Should be extremely interesting.

Bus number five is the perennial ex in the far-away country who has raised jealous brows and is now talking of crashing the lunch to keep an eye on things.  He thinks I am getting distinctly rackety.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black . . .

Anyway, the point of this blog is preparing for busy times.  I don’t expect to catch any of the buses but I’m prepared to put in a bit of a run. I have a month in which I intend to dazzle and at the end of the month sweep into Spain looking good. My sister says there will be several pool parties, i.e. I will have to get into a swimsuit in public for the first time in forever. Yikes.

First on the agenda, and I should probably have done it for  Bus #1 except that I never expected Bus #1 to be interested anyway:  decent haircut and proper brow-shaping for instant results.  Repeat towards end September, but not on the day I am meeting Bus #3, as the newly-plucked look is not bewitching.

Second, dust off the Zumba exercise CD, I’ve been letting that slip to two to three times a week. It took ages at first to struggle through the routine (which is only twenty minutes) and I would be tomato-red by the stretches, the house trembling on its foundations, but I was losing weight and wanted a bit more firm to go along with that. Now I don’t even go pink and am quite surprised when it ends. When I was doing it every day I really noticed the difference in droopy bits which shouldn’t ideally droop, so it is back to that on a daily basis for the next month, using the shaker weights while I dance to banish any suggestion of bingo wings.  My Grasshopper Lawns characters do regular exercise, some on a daily basis. Anything they can do, I can do better.

Third, overall exfoliate with a gentle loofah, and moisturise. Do it every day (instead of once or twice a week, so easy to slip back into bad habits), and by the last week when I am about to start applying the extremely expensive fake tan in my holiday arsenal, I should have skin like chamois leather.  There will be no sunbed. Firstly, I’m a redhead so I don’t change colour. Secondly, sunbeds are probably the worst thing you can do to your skin. Just saying. I’m good about daily moisturiser on face and neck, but need to step it up everywhere else. Hair always gets brushed out a hundred times a day anyway, I have no idea whether that helped it keep its shine and colour, I’m just grateful it has.

Fourth, eat for health. I’m absolutely not going to get into the hotly-contested debate of what you should eat or how often. I’ve lost weight steadily over the last two years purely by eating less and doing more exercise and the only thing I’m likely to change in the next month is include more dairy, to get my nails good and strong, and more veg and fruit for glowing clear skin. About 10 days before Spain, I will re-start Echinacea, to resist the germs that gather around tourists on the move. By the way, we all know you reduce the veg and fruit a few days before special events, right? Very bloating stuff. Protein becomes the priority order of the day.

What did I miss?  There’s a teeth whitening kit in the arsenal which is easy to use and effective, it doesn’t create blinding choppers but it does offset the coffee and cigarette dullness. There’s an eyebath (these are both from Boots) that means both eyes and teeth are brighter and clearer. Restock the current favourite makeups, maybe try a new effect or two – makeup needs a shakeup regularly, what worked best even a year or two ago may not be doing you proud any more.

Stand back, world. I have a bus to catch.

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Loose like a goose – baby steps back to physical health . . .

Every morning I run round the block. Then I kick it back under the bed.

If you haven’t bothered for years, the very word exercise conjures up flushed faces, aching muscles and abruptly feeling very old and tottery indeed. Of course if you’re already doing tons of exercise, you should go find another blog to read, because this one is not for you. This is a blog for those who are a little annoyed to find they can’t run for the train anymore without getting spots dancing in front of their eyes. Or touch their toes, although frankly if that was so important they would be on our knees. Or fancy the first warning twinges of stiffness.

It isn’t too late to loosen up, because it is NEVER too late to improve your general condition.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s no exercise regime in this sad and sorry world that will turn the clock back and make you twenty again, but without torturing yourself you can add some pretty simple routines to your day and you will notice the difference, and you will want to thank me.  Instead just buy one of my novels, which are about people our age and quite funny, and will exercise your brain as you solve the murder, and we’ll both be happy, because they are very nice to read with your next cup of tea.)

This is a long road, and you can head along it at your own pace, but you will feel a difference from the beginning.

While you’re waiting for your morning bath to fill up, or the shower to get warm, do some gentle warm-up exercises.  Do not push yourself on any of these: no pain no gain is a crock, when you are starting again after a long break!  However, push yourself a little further every day as your muscles loosen.

I swing one arm, then the other, in big circles, forward, then backward. Seven times works for me, for all of these, so I recommend it. Five, ten, whatever works for you.

Who remembers ‘I must I must increase my bust’? Elbows back, elbows back:  elbows back, straighten the arms. Elbows back, straighten the arms. ‘The more the better to fill my sweater’?  I still don’t fill my sweater, despite years of doing this, but I don’t tuck my boobs into my waistband either.  More to the point, it opens your chest, loosens your ribcage, and pleases your lungs very much.

Hands on hips, gentle twist one way, then the other, seven times. Keep an eye on the bath. You don’t want it overflowing.

Lunge gently, keeping your knee directly over your foot, seven times. Repeat to the other side. I pull hideous faces at the same time to work my facial muscles.  The wind hasn’t changed yet.

If your bath is a slow filler, you have time to trot on the spot a bit. Not exactly onerous, but your lungs are suddenly full of air and all your muscles have woken up.

One thing I learned about twenty years back – even if you are bedridden, temporarily or otherwise, if you think the above exercises, your brain sends the same messages and the muscles tauten and loosen. Not, obviously, as much – but there is a health-improving reaction.

Okay, now you’re in the bath (or shower). Roll your head gently. It not only keeps your neck supple, it stops it thickening.

Look over each shoulder.

Rotate your hands clockwise, then anticlockwise. Make a fist, open, close, repeat. Now play an imaginary piano with your fingers.

While towelling off, clench your buttocks, tuck your pelvic area up, release. And, of course, repeat.

Today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life, remind yourself that there are two things you will never automatically say again. ‘I can’t’ – and ‘I’m too old’.  You probably can, and you probably aren’t.

There’ll be lots more, but that’s for starters.  And yes, you, the puzzled-looking reader with the bulging rippling muscles, I told you to go read another blog. We’ll catch up with you.

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Over fifty? Bursting with energy? Same here.

I’ve been doing some research on the surge of vitality and energy which I’ve been calling Indian Summer, but not getting very far. From what I can see, the people writing about it (especially those suggesting Fun Activities) are younger and haven’t experienced it, and I suspect most of those who are experiencing it are either successfully putting it to work, or quite rattled by their unexpected feelings of restless boredom. I’m in the latter group. Boredom is driving me nuts, but so is the lack of purpose. I know I want to be out there doing much more, but I can’t be bothered with what’s on offer  . . .

What’s round and bites? A vicious circle.

I actually have a theory about this unexpected energy boost, based on this being the first time in our history that people are hitting late middle age without being knee-deep in grandchildren. No, hear me out.  Until around 1960 the average woman was having babies fairly constantly, unless she abstained from all reproductive activity, between adolescence and menopause.  Soon after menopause, huge surge of renewed energy, because  now she was urgently needed by her offspring who were themselves increasingly drowning in lively children, active toddlers, one in the arms and one on the way. Her man, make no mistake, was as desperately needed by the harassed next generation, and had his own ability surge at a time when modern society tells us we have nothing left to offer.

The Pill, and effective contraception generally, changed the face of families forever. The average family, across the board, became 1.8 children, born at planned intervals in the seventies, eighties and nineties. That generation was raised to think extending schooling as far as possible was essential, which delayed the producing of grandchildren.

No-one told our bodies that everything had changed. Here we are, buzzing with renewed vigour, and – oh.

All that energy! How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! (Ulysses, Lord Tennyson)

ulysses

Travel. Study. Paint. Write. Get restless, get bored, get stressed, fret, fume, rebel against being put out to grass or sidelined, restlessly start new lives.

I wrote a book (No Place Like Place) where future planets are initially colonised by the active energetic fifty-or-sixty-somethings and that’s probably the best solution, but we’re a bit stuck for something purposeful until those colonist-needing planets are, well, even discovered.

I want to be out there doing something amazing and challenging and yes, sorry, awesome, which will need every ounce of experience and learning accumulated over the last fifty-something years.  I want to travel, I want to explore, I want to make every year, every hour, count.  Tick tock. It’s frankly annoying me that my characters at Grasshopper Lawns are having more fun than I am!

So if anyone can suggest something a little more challenging than rambles and get-togethers and over-50 websites with photos of happy smiling people in their seventies who I suspect have been glued to their seats and told to look pleased with their lot, that would be very nice.

Thank you.

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Mellow, seasoned, mature? Rules to include in your life

There’s an email going round which is so appropriate for us mature* types that I’m repeating some of the key sentiments below. Even if you saw it, they are worth the reminder.

*I’m still struggling to find a definition for us, the baby boomers, the golden agers, the ones who have been young for a very long time: no longer young, not yet old . . . I still can’t pin the perfect word down. However I looked up mature in my thesaurus. Check these definitions out:

Fully developed powers of mind and body

Complete in natural development

Ripe

Perfect (as in a plan maturing)

Become due for payment

Older than most (as in mature student)

Grown up

Fully fledged, developed, experienced, knowledgeable, sophisticated. (Don’t know about you, but I like that one)

Mellow, age, season, ripen, bring to maturity

Ripeness, readiness, fullness.

So I guess mature is the word, wide-ranging though it might be. I’m rather taken with mellow, mind. And seasoned.

Anyway, here are the sentiments on that email. Take notes, this is important stuff.

DO NOT FEAR. Fear is so desperately crippling, and the media of the world seem determined to whip us into a permanent state of it. Much of what you fear will never happen, not to you personally. Most of the stuff that does happen is unexpected anyway. When and if it does, deal with it. Fear offers us nothing.

DO NOT REGRET. The past is unchanging. Nothing you can do can change what happened. Take the lesson from it, yes: those who ignore history are fated to repeat it. But do not regret.  Nothing that happened to you, if you survived it, can break you, unless you let it.

VISIT PLACES YOU WANT TO VISIT.  What’s holding you back? Time? Money? Fear? If you really, really want to visit a place, carpe diem, seize the day. Visit it.

EAT WHAT YOU WANT. You may need to eat it in smaller quantities, sure. But life is short. You don’t really want to cram your face with garbage, that’s not what this message is about. It is about treating yourself. I adore cheese, but my favourite cheese, now that I am mature, triggers mood-swings during the day and nightmares if I eat it at night.  I gave it up.  Then I started again – smaller quantities. Because I am experienced, knowledgeable, seasoned and I want to . . .

SEIZE EVERY CHANCE TO SEE YOUR FRIENDS. No-brainer. We seasoned mature mellow people can let life distract us, put things off to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If the chance comes up to see a favourite person, no, it is not too far. It is not too much trouble. The chance may not come up tomorrow. Do it.

SMILE AND LAUGH. Have you smiled today? Laughed? Or are you reading this and that’s all well and good but life isn’t always funny.  No, it isn’t. But a genuine laugh is like a shot of vitamins, the effect is extraordinary. Smile, now, at the screen. Smile at people. I have before now gone hunting through youtube clips to banish the blues. Ellen DeGeneres is usually good, especially some of her stand-up routines. Find someone who cheers you up, and get back into the habit of smiling. The laughter will follow. It feels wonderful.

LIFE ENDS WHEN YOU STOP DREAMING

HOPE ENDS WHEN YOU STOP BELIEVING

LOVE ENDS WHEN YOU STOP CARING

FRIENDSHIP ENDS WHEN YOU STOP SHARING