There’s a big week ahead in our house, and it features a rather big birthday: my 50th. Now, I’m not one of those people who is frilly about admitting their age. Ageing is the goal, right? As Cindy Crawford (we’re alike in so many ways) once said: “Ageing is what happens if we are lucky.”
The alternative is, well, not being here any more, and that would be rubbish. I’ve buried plenty of people younger than me. Old age is a privilege not afforded to everyone.
Don’t misunderstand, though. Neither am I someone who thinks I have to be deliriously happy about the increase in creases and lines and the reflection of my mother looking back at me from the mirror.
I had a fringe cut in a few years back because it was cheaper than botox. Much is said of body positivity but most days I’d settle for body neutrality, a fleshy ambivalence. And while I know I’m not about to go gently into that good night, nor am I quite at one with the idea of being old enough for a Saga holiday. (Although I am assured by Brenda at church that Saga holidays are a hotbed of scandal, passion and gossip, and I could do a lot worse than throw my oar in with the silver-haired hotties. Perhaps I judged them too quickly.)
Still, I’m trying hard to be quietly delighted that I’m turning 50. Really, I am. It’s weird, because I remember my own parents reaching this milestone, and being astounded at just how elderly and wizened they seemed to be.
Of course, now I’m there myself it doesn’t feel quite like that. I’m preaching that 50 is the new 40, that Deep Heat is the new must-have fragrance, and that a pair of practical flats with adequate ankle support are what all the cool kids are wearing this season. That probably means that my own kids will be looking at me in the same way as I did my mum and dad.
Yet one of the good things about getting older – and there are many good things – is that everyone else is getting older with you. My Uterus Fruit and Womb Nugget (that’s what my children are saved as in my phone, just to annoy them; I in turn am called “sandwich maker”) are now grown up at 23 and 21. I was engaged at 21 and married at 23. My two, thank goodness, aren’t nearly that daft and still live at home, enjoying spaghetti hoops on toast and building Lego.
Who in their right mind let me get married before my frontal cortex had fully developed? It’s worked out thus far, but my point still stands.
So, we knew we wanted to mark my half century as a family. But how?
There was much conversation in our house about just what was I going to do. A party was mooted, with fancy dress and a Dolly Parton tribute act – two of my very favourite things.
But we all know I’d end up planning it, purchasing it and tidying it up, as well as organising everybody else’s rhinestones and wigs, and that doesn’t sound like a birthday to me. Besides, no one wants to party on a cold, wet evening in February.
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Read MoreSo instead we are off for a few days away on Monday up to the beautiful Scottish Highlands. Because that won’t be cold and wet in February, now, will it?
I have fanciful ideas of loch-dipping, wee-dram-nipping and indulging in cold bubbles while in the toasty bubbles of the hot tub. I’m lucky to be able to afford to go away at all and to get the time off, and best of all I’m going with the three other humans I like the most in the world.
There was a split second where the current Mr Bottley and I contemplated it just being the two of us, but another thing about getting older and my kids getting older with me is they are such flipping good company.
I always thought I wanted to have children, and we managed it. It isn’t always straightforward, is it? But while I was pretty sure I’d love my children when they arrived, I never really expected to like them – you know, really like them, as people. I knew I’d keep them safe and provide for them, but I didn’t think I’d want to hang out with them, or them to want to hang out with me. It’s a joy.
I remember a few years ago when I had a bit of a health scare saying to the serious-faced doctor that if I could make it to 50, at least then my kids wouldn’t need me any more because they’d be all grown up and if I wasn’t in the world anymore they’d manage.
Now I’m here, though, I’d rather like to be around for a good while longer. As Cindy says, ageing is what happens if we’re lucky – and having stopped to look around in the run-up to this milestone, and seen my children, my husband, and all the good things in my life, I do feel lucky to be 50.
I’m looking forward to my birthday, I’m glad I get to hang out with my favourite people, and I’m hopeful for many happy returns.
This week I have been…
Baking… old-fashioned school dinners. My mum was a school dinner lady and cook, which meant that she often brought home sneaky leftovers; wonderful if it was cheese pie, hideous if it was liver. It also meant that she knew all the secret recipes for our sweet treat favourites and she did not gatekeep those in any way. So for pudding this week it’s been school dinner sponge – tooth-achingly sweet and sprinkled with lurid hundreds and thousands – cornflake tart, chocolate concrete, and toothpaste tart.
Improvising… I don’t have my own parish; instead I’m like a supply vicar or a locum, covering for clergy colleagues when they are off or ill. Usually, I get a bit of a heads-up, but on Thursday I was drafted in at the last minute for a funeral and to cover for a local cleric with a sickness bug. There wasn’t time to get details of the deceased from the family but I was assured Steve, his best friend from the pub would say a few words as a tribute.
The thing is, no one had told Steve about this. And so I stood at the front of the church with a 30-minute service to do where all I knew about the deceased was their name on the front of the order of service. Thinking on my feet I decided the best course of action might be to just chat about Steve together. So myself, the widow and her children did just that. In the end, it seemed just right.
Wearing… ear plugs. There’s a reason I go to bed earlier than my husband and I was reminded of it this week. After a night out drinking wine at the neighbours’, I went to bed late. The husband was already in bed and snoring, loudly. And it’s getting worse too: think one of those nature documentaries of walruses getting fruity. When we were first married I’d gently stroke him and whisper for him to turn over to quieten his grumblings; these days it’s more of a determined elbow jab to the ribs, and he wakes with mystery bruises.
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