Have I been watching those awful adverts again or have I just had a senior moment? Bit of both? Either? Neither? Is asking endless questions one of the signs? Or isn’t it? Surely I should know by my age? Or not? So when do you actually get old then? If sixty is the new forty and eighty is the new sixty, you could be out of training pants at three and back in them at ninety three without ever, formally, being declared old.
It’s a worry. But then old people do that. When they remember to.
Back to the adverts.
(Adverts? What adverts? Did I miss something? Have I dropped off again? Will you wake me up if ……………. Sorry, what did you say?)
The seven signs of ageing are those according to the adverts, for face cream. The television adverts. You know, on television, between the programmes
(I’m not stupid you know. Don’t talk down to me. Just because you’ve got a hundred channels, or whatever it is, doesn’t mean it’s any better than the potter’s wheel. In the interval that was. Very entertaining. I liked the windmill too.)
Anyway, the adverts seem to think that the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles are two of the seven signs of ageing. Curiously they never mention having arms hanging like a pair of draped curtains, that go like sea waves if you rest them on a cushion Sell me a pot of cream to fix that, if you can.
If you count fine lines and wrinkles as two (or a set of two if you did modern maths, after they stopped teaching adding up) then the third sign of ageing might be grey hair. No one has grey hair. It’s old fashioned. Nowadays (now there’s a word that identifies the speaker as old) they have platinum white hair at twenty, streaked raspberry at twenty five and by thirty can no longer remember what the original colour was at all. As bodily hair is passé and they have junked photograph albums in favour of a photo on a phone that shows what they looked like two minutes ago, they have nothing to compare it with, for all they know they may well have had orange hair as a child, especially in some inner city areas.
One of the other signs of ageing is referring to anyone under thirty as ‘they’. Not that we would do that, of course.
Returning to the face cream listing of the seven signs, one of them appears to be uneven skin texture.
Does that sound to you like someone with not enough to worry about, making up a ‘concern’? What do you mean, ‘uneven texture’? Do you mean on my knees it’s so thick I can’t bend my legs whereas on my hip right here look, it’s gone so thin it looks grey because you can see the bone shining through it? If so, why am I not hospitalised at the very least? Or do you mean texture as in: some of it is corrugated and the rest is so smooth the skin cream slides right off?
Let me consult the list of signs, next up: the appearance of poors. Ah, now! Here at last we are in agreement. Poverty in age I can speak of with precision. What happens is that just as you are about to get a pension, grown up children, who left over a decade ago, return bringing ten years’ worth of washing and two cats. Some of us have the unspeakable joy of raising grandchildren so their parents can get a job to ‘find themselves’ or ‘be fulfilled’ or some such claptrap. Others are supporting their parents in specialist nursing facilities that cost the pension of the parent and the elderly child put together and a bit extra. Yes indeed the appearance of the poors…….oh, no wait a minutes let me put my glasses on… ah the appearance of pores. Skin pores? The holes in your skin that let it breathe and make it work? Those pores without which you would be dead is that?
Next! Blotches and age spots. I always scan a hand for liver spots, it’s one of the ways of knowing you might be about to talk to someone sensible. Or that they might be a gardener, in which case we have a lot in common and a pleasant conversation in prospect. Liver spots show you haven’t spent your life swanning around in gloves. They show you have lived. If I see liver spots on your hand I’m more inclined to shake it (gently, obviously, in case I fracture all the matchstick bones, shining greyly through the uneven skin.)
The next sign is dryness. I’ll drink to that. The thing about dryness in old age is that it’s very area specific. Hair like a pan scrubber, throat like the Gobi desert, feet like sandpaper…….all the moisture is concentrated between the hips and thighs and highly unpredictable. All plumbing for all sexes is dodgy after fifty whether you have a pelvic floor you can bounce bowling balls off or not. You can work out your pelvic muscles for years until they’re like rubber bands. Old rubber bands. Very old perishing rubber bands.
Memory loss. This is not in the list, I just thought I’d mention it.
And, of course, memory loss. There’s another. Would you like to hear about my most recent senior moment? I thought you might but before that I’ll tell you about my most recent senior moment.
I’ve been wearing contact lenses for forty five years. (Bear with me, after this I’ll tell you a memory loss incident about my most recent senior moment.) Last week I got up and dressed early so the chap could come and install the new cat door for the temporary cats. The house has been like a tip while they settle in and we find places to put most of everything. So I put my lenses in and then afterwards, thinking I could see (I can with the lenses in) I went up for a shower and to wash my hair. I took the lenses out, put them on the sink in their case, got in the shower. Showered. Got out of the shower. Got towelled. Spotted (dimly) the case on the sink unit. Said ‘Oh, who left that there! I cannot stand any more mess!’ Chucked the contents down the sink. Washed the residue down with a blast from the tap. Towelled my hair, which is dry, and grey. And then looked for my lenses. To put them in. So I could see. Sadly some old fool had just thrown them down the sink.
The seventh sign of ageing, according to the face cream manufacturers, is dullness. They should try living round here, really they should. It’s a thrill a minute.
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Midweek Miniatura will be up Midweek.
Assuming I remember.
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JaneLaverick.com – the thrill of it all.