Getting old? Dont be ridiculous!

"When I am old I shall wear purple and run my stick across the railings in the park....."

It used to be such a silly, fun poem....

That WHEN has become my NOW and my purple is on me teaching me to be

'bloody bold and resolute'......from Macbeth if my memory has not failed completely.

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I look at the huddle of 'oldies' on the bowling green.... at the tea room...in the shops

All shrunk and too many wearing beige and grey and brown that make them look like mice.

I dread the uniformity of sad old age and defiantly put on my purple hat and wear a skirt that billows in the breeze and sing Happy Birthday out loud. (Hopefully when the person is wearing a party hat and not at a funeral.) There are many of those these days..... parties and funerals I mean. We have sherry at both with cups of endless tea.

But if you look carefully at the leaves of our Autumn lives there are some who resist the colour beige and splurge in colours that entertain the eyes.

Above all there are, thank God, other purple hats amongst that celebrating Autumnal crowd who will outlast even those brave reds and oranges when the full blast of the wintry chill of old age arrives.

It is not all doom and gloom.

I find the eccentrics and unusual oldies, men and women who still have stimulating conversations to share. Still write a line or two and who walk and paint a picture. We even bare withering thighs in defiance and plunge into the sea to gasp with amazement that we feel exactly as we did at sixteen.....forty six and sixty and now at....

Don't be ridiculous!

A lady never reveals her actual age.