Authors Electric

Now I don’t know about you, but I often struggle with the way I look. When I was a Young Thing, I could stay up half the night, go out dancing and perhaps even down a Fuzzy Navel or ten and still look dewy and radiant in the morning. I would wash my visage and an entire new face would emerge, wrinkle-free, to greet the day.   I am now in my mid-fifties, a difficult time. I am keeping myself up fairly well, with carefully chosen clothes and accessories, constant colouring of the hair and a cruelty-free vegan range of make up (you know the one). Still, I often catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think, “Who the heck is that tired-looking old girl?” However, in the last few weeks, I have suddenly become radiantly, irresistibly attractive. Really. I’m not making it up. I am a chap magnet! Men are constantly messaging me, asking me if we can meet, if I know what a beautiful woman I am and addressing me as, “Pretty lady.” Hundreds of them. Literally hundreds.   Why? Becaus...

A while ago, I submitted two poems for an anthology on Age. I am Of A Certain Age myself, and was under the (mistaken, as it turned out) impression that it would be celebrating agedness. I was delighted when one poem was accepted. Then, when the proofs came, it was only too evident that the focus was on loss, dementia, incontinence, death...very good poems, I must say, but not exactly joyful. I went to the launch with some trepidation and discovered two things: the guest editor had been working with people with dementia, and I was, by a stretch, the oldest poet there.   It made me remember that when one is surrounded by the less happy aspects of life, perspectives, inevitably, become skewed. No-one there had met my sparky mother, dignified, in control, and sharp as a tack until she closed her eyes for the last time at age 93. Or my friend Alice, who lived to 105 and was equally ‘with-it’ to the end. They didn’t know about the woman who has just passed grade 6 ballet at the ...