Tag: midlife


Aug
2017

thing 3: ‘here are the dogs’: my birthday

Categories: celebrating the everyday, reflection

A few days before my birthday I was checking out the times for Adult Swimming (less interesting than it sounds!) at the leisure centre and found myself scrolling past a timetable entry which said ‘50+ swim’.

Then scrolling back again. Bloody hell, I thought, this time next week I can go to that. I could feel the flesh starting to dangle (more) from my upper arms even as I looked. (more…)


Aug
2017

thing 2: ‘named by sunlight’: the morning walk

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, nature, poetry, reflection, wildlife

Marooned on a far-away planet, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker, Arthur Dent, wakes up and gives ‘his early morning yell of horror’.

A Martin Amis narrator talks of ‘the difference between cosmic reality and how you sometimes feel when you wake up in the morning’. Doctors (and obsessively-Googled medical sites) refer, more blandly, to ‘diurnal mood variation’. But whatever you call it, how you feel in the morning is not always good.

Or at least, how I feel in the morning. I shouldn’t make assumptions, though I suspect I’m not alone in frequently finding myself struggling, on waking. There’s a greyscale (more…)


Jul
2017

thing 1: middle-aged woman on a beach (part ii)

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, reflection, wild swimming

I’m usually a slow getter-inner, when lake or river swimming in Britain.

I enjoy the gradual acclimatisation process, and the way I eventually reach a point where postponing the gasp-inducing full plunge becomes worse than enduring it. On this beach, however, you have to let go of any vision of strolling casually or lingeringly across white-gold sand into lapping clear blue water as your footprints dissolve beautifully behind you. (more…)


Jul
2017

thing 1: middle-aged woman on a beach (part i)

Categories: celebrating the everyday, mindfulness, reflection, wild swimming

I doubt Leonardo’s going to hustle for the lead in this one.

And it probably says something sadly unsurprising about the state of the film industry that I can’t even think of which female actor would have their agent on the blower to the producer. However, I’ve got to tell you: middle-aged woman on a beach felt absolutely bloody marvellous. (more…)


Jul
2017

we’re going to need a lot of cake…

Categories: celebrating the everyday, poetry, reflection

The Big Day.

It’s in the post. Should I hire trumpeters, skywriters, a marquee? A cloistered cell in which to grieve? Do I want a Greek chorus to keen over the event, or a Glee chorus to celebrate it? Do I don some kind of ritual clothing, à la Victorian mourning garb, or go out and buy whatever constitutes my personal equivalent of a combover, a sports car or a push-up bra?

You may detect some ambivalence here. Over the last years (more…)