forties – Page 3 – Because You Can

A Comment on Women and Food

Last year, I gave up any form of weird food restriction after a Dieting Decade which saw me trying every single fad going to keep my weight under control. Atkins, Dukan, 5:2, GI – I’d done the lot. And I was heartily sick of it.

I had my ‘epiphany’ on a Turkish beach, when I suddenly realised that it was all utter bollocks – I didn’t have to adhere to some magazine advertising executive’s view of female body shape and I could simply be me, as I am, eating normal foods and being my normal shape. The world didn’t end and I didn’t suddenly die socially – if anything, I became happier, more confident, sexier and sharper-minded. I simply realised that restricting food restricts a woman’s ability to perform well in the world and I describe my Road to Damascus moment here: https://becauseicanblogdotcom2.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/epiphany/

Since then, I’ve really noticed how other women seem amazed that I order normal food in restaurants, and don’t sit there picking at a protein-based salad (as I used to do). When I offer up the excuse that I walked to work that morning (it takes an hour and twenty minutes) they seem happy that I’ve ‘earned’ the right to have a proper meal (ie with carbohydrates). What I’m eating is always commented upon, and I notice more and more that the other women feel the need to ‘be good’ at the dinner table. And to tell everyone about it.

I went for a dinner last year with a group of friends and sat next to a Serial Restricter. She talked about the calorific value of her food throughout, then told me all the various ways she was going to ‘work it off’ the next day. When women go out for meals together the topic often turns to weight control, and the more they eat and drink at that meal, the more they tell everyone about all the ways they’ll keep the weight off afterwards. I used to do it too. Yawnsville. You can guarantee the guys aren’t talking about this shit.

Recently, a friend I hadn’t seen for a while turned up for lunch and another female friend immediately ‘complimented’ her on how ‘skinny’ she looked. A little piece of me died inside, knowing that this is the first thing we value, or monitor, about each other. Now, I make a point of never commenting on appearance, until I’ve at least asked about how a friend’s life is. And that applies to women and men. If I tell them they look ‘well’, it’s because they truly do look healthy – I’m never going to use it as a codeword for ‘slimmer’, which is what most women do.

I’ll never forget seeing a work colleague take a brownie from someone who’d baked for the office and watching her scrape her teeth down it before discreetly throwing it in the bin. That moment has stuck in my mind as a truly tragic one. This woman was, and is, an amazing person. She is better than brownie-scraping.

But women in groups police each other’s weight. Codewords are used to comment on shape and you get used to your body being surreptitiously scanned by other women when you walk into a room. I’ve worked in female-heavy offices where eating disorders break out because one woman goes on a crash diet. When I taught ballet, a promising young girl of twelve became anorexic because another girl told her she had a ‘funny’ body.

I think that women owe it to themselves to be strong and healthy-bodied, able to stand, walk and run in the world without fear of a small gust of wind knocking them over. I think we owe it our brains to keep them well-fed, so that we are able to speak confidently, debate loudly and deliver a killer pitch at work. Not to mention show younger women a good example. You can’t do any of this well if you’re surviving on 500 calories a day.

Ladies, let rip. We don’t need to do this. No one is asking us to be control-freak skinny and unhappy except us. And we are agreeing to it because we think that’s what the world wants from us. Ask yourself who is going to love you more for being ‘skinny’ – possibly the magazine advertising executive because he/she is selling you products based on your biggest fear. It won’t be anyone else, not even you. Because you’ll never be skinny enough.

Don’t be scared. Have the brownie, then walk out of the door and take up your space in the world.

You’ve earned it.

———————

On policing women’s appetites: http://www.dailylife.com.au/life-and-love/parenting-and-families/stop-policing-my-daughters-appetite-20140423-373ur.html

Take Me Out

Many a time I have pondered the question of why and how it is that I have hardly ever been directly and properly asked out by a man, and had so few actual boyfriends.

And then I have pondered the secondary question of why people assume that I have had lots of offers and a ceaseless round of boyfriendry. ‘Tis not the case.

Why?

Well what has emerged from my memory is a set of themed scenarios that form a distinct pattern. And they began at primary school…

The Silent Fighter Friends

These days I’m always hearing tales about how someone’s 7-year-old has a girlfriend or boyfriend. Back in my day, at a Catholic primary, I barely even knew what a boy was at seven, let alone wanted to go out with them. All I knew was, boys giggled at drawings of human anatomy in science class and sometimes showed the girls their willy (so tiny!). But sometime towards the end of those primary-school years, probably between nine and eleven, I sort of became aware of their ‘appeal’ (not the willies – that came much later).

Anyway, I became aware that Peter and Kevin, who were firm friends, liked me. I also heard about, but never saw, the fight they had over me in the playground, over which one was going to be my boyfriend. Neither of them ever looked at me, let alone asked me out, after that, and I was too busy crushing on Jonny to notice. Jonny didn’t notice me.

Secondary school. Along came Geoff and his mate Paul. Both ginger and freckly (no wonder I’ve got a thing for Eddie Redmayne and Prince Harry). I was their friend for a couple of years – we used to chat in the cloakroom – but at one point they just stopped talking to me. I distinctly remember a disco where I wore my best frilly New Romantic shirt, knickerbockers and gold shoes to impress them. They both sat there sullenly, while Mirror Man and Fascination by The Human League played and I tried to dance like the girls from the band. Later I found out that they both liked me and fought about it. Neither of them ever asked me out. I was still crushing on Jonny. Jonny never noticed me.

The Man Swapper

This has happened twice – I’ve been lobbied by a guy who is really wooing me on behalf of his less-confident friend, and been subtly passed me from man-to-man in a move that has confused the hell out of me (and this was way before PUAs were a thing.)

When I was sixteen, Derek, a guy who seemed so much older than everyone else (he probably was), did his best to reel me in with his best cool-guy performance. I wasn’t allowed into Poppies nightclub in North Wales at that time (it’s closed now), but I used to get in, on account of looking older than my age. Derek was the unofficial leader of our Poppies ‘gang’ and I kinda liked him. But what happened in a move that is still shrouded in the dry ice of the club was that he passed me on to his friend Paul, using a sleight of hand worthy of a stage magician. Paul was a lovely geekish guy, but so not for me. In the weeks that followed, I remember sitting with him in his bedroom, moving out of the way every time he tried to sit next to me, wondering how I’d ended up there. In the end I offered an ‘I’m too busy doing my A-levels’ excuse and got out of this weird pseudo-relationship.

This happened again when I was in my twenties and working at Liberty. I really fancied a guy called John who ran the bookshop department – he was funny, intelligent, from Yorkshire (I know – all three things together!), and looked like a shorter version of then-Bond Timothy Dalton. I went out for coffee breaks with him and his mate Leon from the goods-in department came along too. Before I even knew what was going on, Leon was appearing in the coffee shop on his own and I found myself going out with him without actually being asked. I managed to continue like this for six weeks – but I still wanted John. John didn’t want me.

The Look But Don’t Speak-ers

During my ballet-teaching years I developed a crush on Ian – the guy working at the Sports Centre where I taught. Week after week (year after year!) I turned up for class early, inventing ways to be in the same room as him as I ‘prepared’ for class. He looked, he smiled – I looked, I smiled, I danced! – hell, we even said ‘hello’ once or twice, but nope, nothing. Same went for another guy I had a crush on at my brother’s cricket club. I think the looks between us powered the small Welsh village where the cricket ground stood but it shocked him into silence. I couldn’t have made it more obvious that I wanted to be spoken to but it never worked.

The Gay Cock-Blocker

David. Oh David. I met him at Liberty – he was another goods-in guy. David was beautiful – of Portuguese Goan descent. My crush was so huge I kept a diary called The Book of David. I used to go out to the infamous coffee shop with him and our gay friend, Neil.

Neil, who didn’t tell me that David had confided in him that he had a crush on me until David had left Liberty to travel in South America for a year.

Neil fancied David too. Go figure.

The David Scenario actually gave rise to another phenomenon:

The Stealing Woman and the Passive Man

Such was David’s beauty that lots of women were throwing themselves at him. I didn’t, unfortunately. We were once at a Liberty party and one of our female colleagues made a much more obvious play for him than me, with my normal conversation, lack of moves, and (at that time) non-sexy clothes. They spent the rest of the night snogging so I left. The next day at work David apologised to me and tried to explain what had happened, pitching it as an unavoidable scenario. Oh you poor lamb – being preyed upon like that by a lady. How you must have struggled.

*rolls eyes*

Interestingly, when I went to do my MA in Sussex, I met the same woman in the first week. She triumphantly told me that David had been there studying the year before (and no doubt failing to avoid her charms). ‘Knock yourself out, love,’ I thought.

This had happened to me before in the sixth form. I had a crush on the headmaster’s son and he had one on me. We were both prefects and used to stare at each other as we manned the dinner queue. As soon as I told my ‘friend’ Victoria, she threw herself at him at a school party and that was that. Another guy bit the dust. And so did a friendship.

I Take Matters Into My Own Hands

By the time I reached my late twenties, I’d given up on the idea that I’d be asked out so I started to do it. I met my ex-husband at a club in Brighton. We had a brilliant night chatting and dancing and we swapped numbers, but predictably he didn’t call. I called him four days later and that was that. Four years later, I was the one to ask HIM to marry ME.

Then, after my marriage had ended (initiated by me, obvs), I waited for the invitations to flood in, thinking that things would be different, I was more confident and ‘out there’, I had loads of male friends. I couldn’t wait to go on dates!

Nothing happened.

Hand on heart I can say that in the past four years, two guys have actually asked me out properly, and both were in their twenties and not British. They were confident in their approach and I was so surprised by them that of course I agreed. British male friends tell me it’s incredibly scary asking a woman out – you risk rejection – so I suppose these guys had the benefit of being brought up in countries with more bravura in their DNA.

As I am now the ‘asker’, I know how scary it is, but I’m usually pretty sure of what the response will be before I ‘go in there’. But even on Tinder, where I’ve indicated the likelihood of me accepting a date request simply by swiping right, they still don’t make the move.

And people wonder why I’m single.

Specs and the City

I love my Sex and the City box set. I really do. I’ve watched it many, many times. For me and many women it became an era-defining examination of womanhood, friendship and relationships. I still find new resonances in it now, new ways in which it reflects aspects of my own life, and at various times, I feel a real kinship with one of the four girls, depending on what’s going on at the time. If you ask them, most women know if they’re a Carrie, Miranda, Samantha or a Charlotte (I’m a Miranda/Samantha combo).

But there’s always that episode towards the end of the final season where the ham-fisted scriptwriters create an allegory of womanhood that does not sit well with me. It’s called ‘Splat!’ and it’s the episode in which a 40-year-old socialite bemoans the end of her party lifestyle in New York, declares she is “so bored she could die” and promptly trips over her Manolos and falls out of the window. Later, at her funeral, Miranda quips, “the party’s officially over,” and Carrie rams the point home, “She wasn’t always so tragic… Ladies, if you are single in New York after a certain point, there is nowhere to go but down.”

Nice one, SATC. Way to make every woman over forty like some cast-off piece of shit. Even worse, this is the episode where the smugly loved-up Carrie is parading her fifty-something hot Russian lover in front of her fifty-something hot female boss, who is forced to date ‘a hobbit’ because younger women like Carrie are stealing men from her age-appropriate ‘wading pool’.

Carrie ends up giving up her work, her life in New York, to go to Paris with The Russian, just to escape the horror of being single and nearly forty in New York, where all her friends are partnered up before they reach their ‘scary age’.

It’s only in these final stages of the box set that I start to not love SATC. Up until then, I love its celebration of female independence and identity but ultimately, it’s just one Big search for a life defined by a being with a man. Even if that man is emotionally unavailable, jealous of your success or obsessed with his work.

I know this is partly because the series was made during the nineties and early noughties, when everyone was supposed to be filled with the Y2K meltdown fear. It almost represented a kind of pre-war moment where everyone rushed to couple up before the apocalypse.

But I couldn’t help but wonder … what would the storyline be if it was made now?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the show hadn’t copped out to coupledom and looked realistically at the lives of women post-forty, living in a city, with their own flats and good jobs, just doing their thing and having a great time? I know plenty of them. I am one of them. Hell – I’m up for starring in this new show.

I reckon Carrie would be back in her East 73rd street apartment, having decided that The Russian was too up his own ass, and Mr Big was too much like hard work. She’d have her own column in Vogue (she’s moved on from the New York Star), two more book deals, and be the proud owner of a vintage-fashion boutique in SoHo (rather than a walk-in wardrobe built by her rich fiancée). She may also have invested her book royalties in Steve and Aidan’s second bar – a cocktail one, obviously.

I’m always disappointed that Carrie gives up her hard-won, didn’t-want-to-marry-even-gorgeous-Aidan independence to plump for a guy who can barely say the word ‘love’, even at the end of six seasons. Sure, he makes her laugh but he doesn’t offer the ‘ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love’ she says she’s looking for.

Everyone in the show except Carrie has to deal with a huge reality check towards the end – miscarriage, dementia, cancer. This is the stuff of life, in my experience, not waiting to be swept off your feet in a Parisian hotel and into a shiny new NYC apartment by a suave city boy. But Carrie is the ’90s Holly Golightly, a child-woman on the look-out for a father figure to rescue her. She doesn’t deal with reality very well (I can’t bear Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

At the end of the box set and into the first (disappointing) movie, I always feel more akin to Miranda than anyone else. Her life is derailed by a mother-in-law with dementia (my mother suffered from it) and she has already lost her own mother. And then there’s Samantha – her mantra of “I love you but I love me more” means she ends up choosing independence over an unsatisfactory relationship.

Been there.

But the show does momentarily find its centre again in those last lines uttered by Carrie: “…the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well that’s just fabulous.”

Abso-fuckin-lutely.

Sixth Date Syndrome

One of the things I did in the first couple of years after my marriage broke up was date men my age, looking to see if there was a potential new partner out there for me. One would assume that there might be, no?

I sallied forth and met some really great fortysomethings, either online dating, through friends or via social media.

But what I didn’t know when I started dating them was that each and every one of them would run away screaming after the sixth date.

I met ‘Simon’ through two mutual friends in a pub. Quiet, dryly funny, smart and a bit of a silver fox. I thought I’d take the initiative (I usually have to) and ask him if he’d like to go out. I gave him a business card and I think he texted me at some point and we started dating.

We did the usual fortysomething thing of nice bars, good wine, lovely restaurants. We chatted about travel, our jobs, previous relationships and I really enjoyed his company. He seemed ‘sorted’ – a good guy.

Listen to me reading this blog post here.

One weekend, after the sixth great date, I was in my kitchen making coffee, while he was sitting in another room. I thought I’d suggest we go for a walk ‘sometime’ on Hampstead Heath.

I heard an audible groan.

I stuck my head round the door and shouted, “Hey – don’t sound TOO excited!” expecting him to say, “Sorry, I just stubbed my toe on your coffee table”, but what I got was complete silence.

Tumbleweed.

Then later that week, when I texted him to ask what was going on, I got two huge ‘text essays’ explaining (mansplaining) that I was clearly ‘looking for something serious’ and he wasn’t.

“Unbelievable.” I texted back.

It was like an episode out of Sex and the City, but minus the Post-It Notes.

I met ‘Daniel’ through social media. A louder version of Simon and an uber ‘foodie’. We had six really great dates featuring great restaurants, cocktail bars and movies. On the sixth date, I decided to tell him I liked him. Just that. “I like you,” with a winning smile.

Not, “I’d like to marry you”, or “I’d like to have your babies” or “I’d like to share your financial gains”.

Just “I like you.”

I didn’t hear from him for two weeks, after which point I started getting ‘nighttime’ texts from him, trying to recalibrate the dating back to a more ‘casual’ setting. He’d told me before that he enjoyed dating because it meant he got to try new bars and restaurants. I think I was just the ‘caddy’ to the foodie.

Nah. Think I’ll leave it there, thanks.

So when I met ‘Paul’ I thought I’d test my theory again. Three strikes and I’m out.

Paul had recently split from his wife, which was bound to be tricky, but we got on incredibly well, especially intellectually. Funny, smart, worked in media – lots to talk and laugh about. Until I told him I liked him on the sixth date.

I’ve never seen anyone row away so fast. And again, the ensuing text essay ‘mansplaining’ how he couldn’t commit to anything.

I wasn’t asking him to.

Sigh.

I would lay money on that scenario happening again, but I haven’t dated any fortysomethings for a while so haven’t had a chance to test my theory again recently.

They’re not a demographic that are particularly interested in me and I’ve blogged before about them wanting younger women so that they can a) fuel their midlife ego and b) possibly have children.

Well, having encounted Sixth Date Syndrome I’m not particularly keen on them either, and really, I’m too busy fuelling my own midlife ego crisis.

What really irks me is the assumption that I want something out of them, that I’m trying to lay a commitment trap of some kind. That just by saying I like them, they translate it as “…and I want to marry you and have your babies.”

Way to think too much of yourselves, guys.

I’ve done the commitment thing and come out the other side. I’m very clear about not wanting children, and really, way past that childbearing age.

What if I actually do like hanging out with you and want to do it on a regular basis without raiding your bank account? Ooh, SCARY.

Am I really that intimidating, with my good job, own flat, ability to hold a conversation, tell a joke and initiate sex?

Apparently so.

Anyway, fortysomething men, see you when we’re all in our sixties and still out there.

At least we will be able to share our stories of how much fun it was to date younger men and women, eh? Looking forward to it.

Soundtracks

The recent ‘Top 10 books that have impacted your life’ meme has been making me think about songs that have played a similar role in mine. There might have been books along the way that encapsulated a moment, but in a way, nothing does it like a song. And those songs often reappear unexpectedly in our aural landscapes, transporting us back to those moments, in a way that books don’t. We have to consciously re-read those, and we rarely do.

So what are my songs?

1. The Surrey With a Fringe on Top by Rodgers and Hammerstein (Oklahoma). My dad played the piano and used to play this to me as a child. Years later I went to see Hugh Jackman singing it in Oklahoma on stage. It never fails to have me sobbing by the end. It’s such a loving song. (See also: Little Brown Jug. My dad used to play the organ at a Welsh chapel and every now and again I’d accompany him down there when it was empty and he’d play this for me).

2. Ave Maria by Bach/Gounod. My mum had a beautiful voice and sang in our Catholic church on Sundays. She taught me the Latin words to this and we’d often sing it together. We played Pavarotti’s version at her funeral. (See also: Climb Every Mountain by Rodgers and Hammerstein (Sound of Music). I heard her sing it one night, at a dinner party, with my dad on the piano. She always denied it had happened, but it did. She stopped singing after my dad died so it was a rare thing to hear her beautiful voice.)

3. I Only Have Eyes for You by Art Garfunkel (orig. Warren/Dubin). Mesmerisingly beautiful love song that I played and sang along to over and over as a tweenager. I wanted someone to sing those words to me, but maybe not Art (sorry, Art).

4. Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. See my ‘Why I’ll Never Stop Trying to be Kate Bush’ post. Says it all.

5. Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears. This is how I felt when I first had a massive crush on someone – bells ringing, heart a-flutter. Still gets me today, and they’re still a band I reckon to be one of the best pop bands ever. Their songs stand out a mile. (See also: Save a Prayer by Duran Duran. Said crush was on Simon le Bon and this is the song where I knew something naughty was going on in the song, but not quite sure what. Apparently, it’s all about a one-night-stand. My mother would not have approved.)

6. Out of Africa soundtrack by John Barry. My family had lived in Kenya during the 1950s but I wasn’t born then. I longed to go and follow in their footsteps and finally got the chance with my ex-husband – we visited Kenya and Namibia. The soaring soundtrack reminds me of our safaris to Tsavo and the Namib desert. We constantly referenced Meryl Streep’s accent and quoted the movie all the way round. Happy times.

7. Hysteria by Muse. The soundtrack to my marriage break-up. It encapsulated the yearning for freedom that I felt at the time. I became obsessed with Muse. (See also: Sing for Absolution by Muse and The Reckoner by Radiohead. This was clearly my Catholic guilt kicking in for wanting the things I wanted at the time.)

8. The Tempest by Pendulum. The angry “fuck you” break-up song after splitting up from a kingsized love rat. Along with Hysteria, you can tell these were my tempestuous years. (See also Hypocritical Kiss by Jack White – the soundtrack of last summer).

9. She Wolf by David Guetta (ft. Sia). The soundtrack to a passionate relationship with a younger man. He couldn’t stop playing it and neither could I. Maybe he saw me as a predator, but in reality, he asked me out. Always the way…

10. Up All Night by John B. This drum and bass track encapsulates my new-found freedom and lust for life. I love playing it really loud on headphones. It also references my insomnia, which has only recently gone away (see ‘Epiphany’ post). (See also: Waiting all Night by Rudimental (ft. Ella Eyre). This track is the sound of my new life in north-west London. I love drum and bass, love Rudimental, and I love Ella Eyre’s soulful voice. It’s my go-to late-night track.)

Plenty that didn’t make the list: Selecter by The Selecter, Dandelion/Cochise by Audioslave, Born Slippy by Underworld, Karma Police by Radiohead, Animal Nitrate by Suede, Vienna by Ultravox, I Feel For You by Chaka Khan, Atomic by Blondie, Prince Charming by Adam Ant, Geno by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

What are yours?

In Praise Of Younger Men

I date younger men.

Or rather, they date me.

All of that ‘cougar’ predatory-female stuff is just nonsense – they’re the ones on the prowl. They sometimes try to laugh it off by saying that I’m ‘on the hunt’ but I’m not. They are. And more often than not, they’ve made the first move.

When I was 38, I started to notice that my ‘attention demographic’ had shifted. I’d never really attracted the attention of twentysomethings when I actually was one, but suddenly I started noticing a glance here and there, a cheeky grin or even a wink.

At first I thought I was imagining things but I ‘checked in’ with one guy who was at a party I was at, clearly giving me the eye and he confirmed it.

He was interested.

At that time I was still married so nothing happened but I started to notice furtive glances all over the place. By the time I was set free I was keen to test the water, so to speak.

And oh, the joy.

Once you’ve weeded out the PUAs (look it up) and the ones just ticking a box on their life to-do list, there are some really lovely guys out there who just like dating older women.

I’m going to change the names of the guys involved, but here are the moments that have been some of the happiest times in my life, brought to me by this unexpected target audience.

The Spontaneous One
Liam met me in person for the first time at a Muse gig in Wembley Stadium (Timehop app is telling me this was four years ago this week). It could have gone horribly wrong: we’d met online and I found myself offering him my spare ticket (not a euphemism). I spotted him outside the venue, looking a bit uncomfortable. By the time we’d had a beer, and I’d convinced him to remove his shades, we were getting on really well. Luckily.

An older couple were sitting next to us in the stands and Liam told me later that after we’d kissed, he’d turned round and found the woman scowling at him and the guy giving him a thumbs-up and a wink.

Brilliant.

The Risk-Taking One
Niall was an apprentice engineer and lived at home with his god-fearing family. Under the guise of doing ‘overtime’ at work he came to meet me, on his motorbike. He was beautiful, and a really bright, emotionally mature young man. He boasted to all his friends that he was seeing an ‘actually hot 43-year-old.’

How we laughed.

Particularly on those occasions when he avoided church and worshipped me instead. Ha.

The Thoughtful One
There are actually a few of these – guys who bothered to arrange days or nights out and put in the effort.

There was Harry, who bought a load of ingredients round to my flat after work and made me dinner, followed by a day out at a stately home.

Back then, I was worried what people would think, seeing me hand-in-hand with a gorgeous tall, blond twentysomething, but he insisted. No one even blinked an eye and it was one of those magical days.

Then there was Zayn, whom I always arranged to meet in a pub. He always texted beforehand to tell me exactly where he was sitting so I wouldn’t have an awkward moment in the bar, and when I got there, he’d have bottle of wine and two glasses, ready to go.

One night, while Zayn was at the bar, I overheard a woman in the pub bemoaning her relationship woes to her male friend. She pointed at me and said, “I want to do what she’s doing.” As my date returned to the table I beamed with pride.

And then there was Louis. Half-Irish, half-Jamaican, about six foot five. Last summer he took me to Regent’s Park and when I met him, he’d bought champagne, strawberries and lots of other good things. I laughed as we strolled through the park to find a picnic spot and everyone – male and female – gawped at his beauty.

He once drove past me unexpectedly, shouted my name, stopped the car, ran across the road to tell me I looked gorgeous, ran back to his car and drove off. What a guy.

The One That Asks You Out Properly

I can count the number of times I’ve actually been asked out from a cold, standing start, on one hand.

Less than one hand, in fact.

And the ones that have asked me out on a date, properly, are younger men who aren’t British. Go figure. The sweetest one asked if he could take me out for a cup of tea. Just lovely. Of course I said yes.

The One That Slightly Breaks Your Heart

Of course, one of the sidebar themes of dating younger men is that it can never be a ‘thing’. It’s very much ‘dating in the moment’ and there is usually an unspoken, or spoken, agreement at the start that it won’t lead to a relationship. There is both joy and sadness in being together, and with one particular guy, let’s call him Justin, we even cried a little at the start because we knew we had strong feelings for each other.

Against my usual rules, I let myself become more than just a lover with Justin. One of the things that is so intoxicating about a younger man is their engagement with life. Everything is exciting and new, even a fortysomething woman. I loved how Justin lived his life – he worked hard, played hard, and wanted to know and experience everything. To me, it was an elixir of life I couldn’t stop imbibing.

This situation could not be sustained and after a couple of months it became clear that it wasn’t going to work. I was thrown for a while into a mini mid-life crisis. I realised that I was so jealous of Justin’s youth – that he could simply find someone else straight away (he did) and carry on opening all of life’s doors. I had to cut off all social-media contact so that I couldn’t witness it – it suddenly seemed like a relentless stream of The Joy of Youth and I had to turn it off at the source.

But as the months went by, I found myself looking back on that time with increasing gladness. Dr Seuss’ maxim: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” became my way of describing the feeling.

I’m still smiling.

The Years

Some friends say to me that it’s all very well having fun with these young guys, but when am I going to get serious and find someone my own age, or older? Guys my age aren’t interested, I reply. They want someone younger, especially if their dream is to have kids (and it usually is). (They’re also often threatened by someone successful with a brain, but that’s for another post.)

That’s been one of the really unexpected twists in my post-marital world. I thought there might be guys my age who would pop out of the woodwork. Instead, I was met by a vast silence, punctuated with approaches from married men (I’m afraid so), and the stealthy advance of the younger guard. And I say again, it’s their advance, not mine.

For months, and maybe a couple of years post-divorce, I found myself trying to recreate the same-age coupledom that I’d had with my ex-husband. It was ‘almost’ irritating to have young men buzzing around me, with the promise of nothing long-term. Almost.

But as time has gone on I’ve realised something: what if these are The Years? The ones where I have the most fun with the beautiful young men that I didn’t date when I was their age? What if these moments of joy with these great guys are the things I will whisper about happily when I’m on my deathbed?

I am definitely a late-bloomer – I look and feel so much better than I did in my late teens and twenties and back then, I led a very sheltered, Catholic-upbringing, worried-about-everything, date-free existence. Is this the time I make up for all that?

Well, yes I think it is.

Because I can.

The One Where I’m Absolutely Not a Yummy Mummy

Last night, getting off the London Overground at Kensal Rise, I was accused by a group of drunk, loud-mouthed, relatively posh boys of being a ‘yummy mummy’.

I had heard them shout, “Welcome to middle England!” as the train pulled into the station and had scowled in their general direction. This prompted them to follow me on the platform, saying, “I bet she’s married to an advertising executive!” (wtf?) and then shouted, “She’s a yummy mummy wearing jogging bottoms!”

It took all my strength not to turn round, face them on a full platform, to say, “Actually, I’m a single, childfree, publishing executive who eats boys like you for breakfast.”

In reality, I was on my way back from a day-long hike, wearing leggings and cross-trainers. The boys had confused me with the mums’ yoga tribe that is part of the rich fabric of the Kensal Rise and Queen’s Park community. They’re everywhere – usually in their late thirties or forties, skinny, wearing drapy jersey items, holding a juice or a green tea from a local cafe and either looking zenned-out from yoga or looking a bit fraught. The only bit of that list I tick is the age one, and maybe the odd drapy jersey item. And yeah, ok, I was looking a bit frazzled after the hike.

The YM is the predominant fortysomething-female tribe in my area and I’m not part of it. I moved here two years ago, two years after my separation, and thought a lot about how to infiltrate its ranks, wanting to make new friendships with women of my own age. I joined a local group that has events for women but the tribal subsets were already set in stone. You see I’m not at the school gates, in the morning yoga class or at the coffee meet-up at our local deli so to them, I’m pretty much invisible.

After a while I stopped trying to infiltrate. In the main, the friendships I’ve forged here are with younger people. I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by a great set of people in my building – the infamous ‘gold building’ in Kensal Rise – and we socialise a lot. I set up a Facebook page for residents to facilitate it and I’ve met some really wonderful, genuine people.

At first I was acutely conscious of the age gap – they’re anything from late 20s to late 30s – and kept pointing it out every time we went to the pub. There were genuine looks of puzzlement: “What are you on about?!” they’d say. But there is a societal stigma about middle-aged people who hang out with younger ones, like they’ve never matured enough to keep up with their peer group or they’re trying to hard to hang on to their youth.

But what if you’ve done the whole mature couply thing for quite a long time, decided it wasn’t for you, re-entered non-couply society and found that most of the people at your age are still at the mature couply party? It is one party I’m happy not to be attending right now, but I’ve had to accept that I’ve left the cosy weekend dinners for six round at someone’s house, planned weeks or months in advance, for spontaneous meet-ups at the pub with whomever happens to be around, followed by dancing at Paradise or a party back at someone’s flat.

Long live spontaneity, in my view.

Because my new local friends have welcomed me into their lives as a person they want to hang out with, I no longer feel the urge to refer to myself as ‘the oldie’ – it just seems inappropriate now. What’s particularly lovely is that I have a couple of young couples in my circle of friends whom I love dearly. Back when I was in coupledom, we’d never have thought about hanging out with a single friend, so strong was the tribal urge to bond with other couples, and the stigma around their situation. Thank goodness that little ‘rule’ has been broken.

One thing I’ve grown to loathe in life is the way some people try to box you up, in a category that is age-appropriate. I cringe when I hear people say, “But he’s 18, so of course he’s just going to want to hang out with his mates, get drunk, have lots of sex and go wild at music festivals.” What if he’s 18, wants to concentrate hard on his studying, hang out in a coffee shop on his own, have a little bit of sex, or no sex, and camp with one good friend in a remote village in Wales?

Why do we pressure people to tick all the age-related boxes?

Similarly, one might hear someone say, “But she’s 35, she’s going to want to find a man quickly, marry him, have a child, buy a house and enjoy weekends at B&Q.” Aaagh! What if she wants to take a gap year to travel, concentrate on her career, date several men without marrying them, and rent in a really cool place that doesn’t require DIY?

You can see where I’m going with this.

People assume stuff about me. I know they do. They see me on a train, running in Queen’s Park or walking down the road to Portobello and think, “Married, just been to yoga class while the kids are at school, off to have lunch at an artisanal cafe that sells vintage furniture on the side, before picking up Tarquin and Oberon from school and making them eat quinoa for supper.”

Sometimes I feel like wearing a ‘Baby On Board’-style badge that says “Single, childfree, not doing what you think I’m doing.”

I assume stuff about people too – I wish I didn’t. I assumed younger people wouldn’t be interested in getting to know me, I assumed other fortysomething women would want to welcome me into their tribe even though I wasn’t wearing the right headdress, I’ve assumed fortysomething men would want to date me.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

But there is something so right, right, right about not being in a tribe.

Or building one of your own.

Because you can.

——————

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/11025549/Class-in-21st-century-Britain-the-new-signifiers.html

Written on the Body

There’s no doubt that the tattoo is having a renaissance.

I used to have one or two friends, male and female, with the odd Thai symbol on their hips, ankles or across their backs, always covered up for the office and only exposed at work dos or on holiday.

Now, in a post-World Cup world, everyone’s boasting a sleeve or two and maybe even a Cheryl Cole full butt. (I wouldn’t know…)

One of the great things about the Tatt Renaissance is that they’re no longer taboo in the workplace, particularly in the media industry. Creative types are wearing them with pride because they instantly say something about who they are. (And I for one, find them really sexy.)

I’ve never had a tatt but I’ve started to think about having one. Where once I thought it would have to be in a hidden place, I’m now thinking it could be on show, as an expression of who I am.

Then I realised that I’ve already got one, an identity marker, written on my body. Not an appendix or C-section scar, no childhood dogbite or school jab on my arm. It’s actually a burn on the side of my wrist. It’s quite big, and white, made even more obvious by the very slight tan I acquire in the summer (I’m Welsh – give me a break).

People have tried to get me to get rid of it by using various creams and potions but I resisted for some reason. You see, it’s the scar from a huge blister I got one night.

From a hot-water bottle.

Yes.

I’d moved out of the warm marital bed in February 2010 into a cold spare-room one. I’d made a hot-water bottle and hugged it for warmth in bed. Even though it was busy giving me a third-degree burn overnight, I was so exhausted it didn’t wake me up. When I did wake up, the blister was the size of an egg.

Yowch.

Then came the urging of friends for me to use Bio Oil to get rid of the scar – it’s the lotion women use to get rid of pregnancy stretch marks. Nope, I said, almost rather proud of my war wound. And to be honest, it has become something of a badge of honour.

I see people staring at it and if they ask me how I got it I tell them. Because for me it signifies at moment where I took the leap into the unknown, out of a warm bed of coupledom into the cold sheets of singlehood. And even though the warmth I desperately clung to hurt me at first, it’s part of what defines me. (Interestingly one of the first bits of human warmth I did cling to hurt me very badly. So you see, it’s symbolic.)

Now I smile when I see my hot-water bottle scar in the mirror. It’s on the same arm as my birthmark, which nestles weirdly below my little-finger nail. In Tudor times I’d have been burned as a witch: I’m left-handed, have a birthmark on my left little finger, weirdly foreshortened third fingers on both hands and no discernible knuckles on said fingers.

I know, right?

When I was at school I was really self-conscious about my hands and I endured a tiny bit of bullying about them. But one day, a teacher (Mr Dowling) overheard the teasing and told the assembled group of taunting kids that all of that just made me more special. They stopped the taunting immediately.

Thanks Mr D.

Ok so I have often felt I had to explain to manicurists what’s going on there but they seem to mind less than I do. In fact, they seem surprised when I start pointing out all my deformities as they push back my cuticles. They must have seen hands in a lot worse state than mine. They just want to ask me if I’m going on holiday.

Now I quite like my hands and their quirky details. And the scar that accompanies them is just another talking point and a memory jolt to remind myself where this phase of my life began. I never worry about it or try to heal or hide it. It’s just what it is.

Me.

Going Commando

I’ve just started watching Royal Marines Commando School on catch-up TV: a documentary on Channel 4, following a group of guys as they undertake the toughest military-training programme in the world.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/royal-marines-commando-school

I’m only a couple of episodes in, but I’ve started to realise that what is captivating about it isn’t the actual end game: becoming a Royal Marine. It’s watching humans forcing themselves to go through an extraordinary experience to see if they can make themselves into better people.

Whether it’s because they know they’re a bit prone to laziness, or feel the need to accelerate their journey from boy to man, or just want to provide a better life for their families, each guy has their own personal reasons for joining the training course. And these reasons have much more to do with setting themselves a personal challenge than actually becoming a fighting machine.

After watching a couple of episodes, I started to think about how we set ourselves challenges in life, and met a friend who’d read my blog post about choosing not to have a baby (see: Ping Pong). She admitted that one of the reasons she’d had one was to experience something beyond being herself. She’d had a fairly stable, happy upbringing and could see herself just cruising on through to pensionhood just remaining in stasis as her original self. Having a baby has brought such a huge personal challenge into her life that she is permanently altered. But for the good.

There are the challenges we set ourselves and the ones that challenge us – the ones that are beyond our control. My early life was marked with the trials of parental decline and death. My father died when I was 10 and although my mother lived until she was 71, she had a slow decline with dementia, and died in my early 30s. There is absolutely no doubt that these events have had a huge and profound effect on my life, and the lives of my family, but they’re not all bad.

One on hand, they have given me a level of fearlessness that means I know I can handle huge upheaval and change, such as leaving a marriage at the age of 43… I’m still scared when these things loom up at me (thankfully not often) but I always know in my head and heart that everything will be ok.

It was, and it is.

On the other hand, I don’t need to prove I can face a big challenge, which is possibly one of the many reasons I’ve chosen not to procreate, but I still set myself fairly sizeable tasks to overcome, such as leaving a perfectly good job (at Liberty in the ’90s) to move to Brighton to do an MA.

I was on my own in a new town, crying into my pillow at night, but eventually I found my feet, and my first job in publishing (the MA went by the wayside). I still look back on that time with immense pride – that one leap into the unknown was a game-changer in so many ways.

Liberty had given me a part-time job in their store in Brighton (sadly no longer there) and when I decided to leave the MA, they supported me with more work. I remember not being able to afford public transport, and walking to and from the shop along the seafront during that winter. I loved it!

I got myself on a business-skills course and researched local publishing jobs in the big business directory in Brighton Library. Yes, an actual directory in a library. I walked into Wayland Books, off the snowy streets of Hove and met MD Steve White-Thompson, in his stockinged feet. He gave me what would be now called an internship on the spot and that was it. I was in and on my way.

I’m now beginning to wonder if my life isn’t some massive commando obstacle course that I’ve set myself. There are the bits when I’m forcing myself to crawl through mud, pull myself up to the top of the rope, or fling myself over a ridiculously high wall. I look at the guys in Commando School doing that and think, “Why on earth would you put yourself through that?!”

But actually, I do. All the time.

And so do my friends.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to ‘be nice to Lisa’ because I think I’m quite hard on her. I think she always wants to be perfect at everything and has to be told that it doesn’t have to be like that all the time (oh god, I just referred to myself in the third person – had to happen at some point…)

Whether it’s publishing a big brand, trying to look glamorous at all times, or going on the coolest holiday to the perfect hotel, I set my targets high, and only end up exhausting myself.

On holidays of yore, I used to march my ex-husband around all the sights listed in the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide to a place just so I could tick them all off and feel happy that I’d achieved something. And guess what? The best bits of the holiday were always that last day where there was nothing left to see and we could just relax. Funnily enough, that’s what I do on holiday now: see a few things but mainly relax. (And I bet he does too.)

Sometimes I tell my friends to go easier on themselves because I can see them doing it too. The best house! The best holiday! The best job! Best, best, BEST! Even writing that makes me feel exhausted.

So while I’m watching Commando School and actually shouting at the screen, encouraging the would-be soldiers to get to the top of that rope or run that extra mile, part of me wants to say, “Mate, just sit down in the mud for a minute. Take a moment. Regroup. It’ll be fine.”

Because you can.

And it will be.

When Push Comes to Shove

One of the great things about this summer is that I’ve discovered the whole ‘walking to work’ thing. I woke up one morning a month or so ago, suddenly full of the joys of the season, determined to walk the path from Kensal Rise to Fitzrovia, which takes me along the Grand Union Canal, through Paddington Basin, down Edgware Road and along Seymour/Wigmore Street.

I love it. Every day there are Canadian geese, herons, coots and dogs doing Instagrammable things, and a variety of people going about their business on barges. There are runners, cyclists, speed-walkers, drunk people (at 9am), builders, commuters, men smoking shisha outside the Lebanese Edgware Road restaurants. It’s brilliant.

The one thing I really didn’t expect to encounter on my walks were The Women Who Bump Into You. This is a thing and I’m starting to think it’s deliberate.

It happened only this morning.

I was gaily walking along the canal through Little Venice, smiling at an approaching little dog and its lady owner, when WHAM she rammed straight into my shoulder rather than move out of the way. It was like one of those moments where one minute Pharrell Williams’ Happy is playing in your head, but it’s followed by a sudden screech of a needle on vinyl.

WTF?

This has happened to me before. On buses, in shops, in bars and clubs – a sudden elbow in the side or a shove to push you out of the way. From a woman. Not to mention when I’m running. I’ve rammed into someone who seemed to think that she could beat me through a gateway when she was walking and I was running.

What’s with that?

And why don’t men do it? (They actually do step out of the way – most of the time…)

I’ve always been very spatially aware – and aware of how other people aren’t. I find it amusing, when out running, to see people flailing about in front of me, unable to decide which way to go or what to do. Inside my head, I scream, ‘MAKE A DECISION ON WHICH WAY TO GO AND COMMIT TO IT!!’

I’ve also reviewed that Tumblr feed: Men Who Take Up Too Much Room on the Tube, with a very big sense of how men do carve out space in the world for themselves, without even thinking about how it impacts on others. Totally unaware of us ladies squished up in the corner, next to their widely spaced knees. And of course their widely spaced elbows, that often find themselves stabbing our breasts unexpectedly. (If I could teach a man one thing it would be ‘just keep your elbows under control’.)

One of the best bits of my walk to work is down Edgware Road, knowing that this pavement space is largely inhabited by men, but for that moment each morning I own it. I stride forward, hair flowing and head held high past all the cafes, knowing that I’m taking up a place in a very male-oriented environment, wearing whatever I want. “Ha!” I think. “Gotcha.”

But when I turn onto the busier Seymour St and head into central London proper, I get whacked by handbags, forced into the road and nudged out of the way. By women. All manner of unsisterly behaviour goes on. I may well be imagining it, but I don’t think I am. It’s barely there, just a subtle thwack here and there, with nary a ‘sorry’ in sight. (Nobody says sorry – or nary for that matter – in London. You’ll get a slight hiss as a presage of the full word if you’re lucky).

I’ve given lots of thought to why this happens and I think it’s this:

Women are so used to having to carve out a space for ourselves in this world, that we carve other women out of the way too.

Literally.

And in many ways we’re easier prey than men. Nudge a guy out of the way and you might be in trouble (although if they’re really slow-moving, a quick prod with a bag is a good way to get them moving faster. I’ve tried it). We know that women won’t fight back, in general, so it’s an easy win.

I just think about all the ways that women are nudged out of the way in life and think it might be a little easier if we were nudging each other the right way.

Forward.

http://powderroom.jezebel.com/a-open-letter-to-men-on-the-brown-line-train-at-rush-ho-1636395516?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow