It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ John Cleese (as Brian Stimpson in Clockwise.)
Even the Met Office man said it on the telly last night - The weather is just toying with us - an hour or two of sunshine and then the cloud descends - or the ice.
My birthday is in early February and every year as it approaches, a grumpy gloom begins to fall over me. This year it was a big birthday and the gloom has been alleviated by the generous and loving people around me - I've had some wonderful parties and treats - but still, there's a shadow. This could just be end of winter blues - most people seem to feel something similar, we're all hoping for spring and trying not to hope too much in case we're disappointed - but I think it's more than that. When I was younger a birthday was a light in the February darkness, but nowadays it's a reminder of age and ageing, a nudge towards another darkness.
I'm nervous about writing this here. The internet, blogs, websites, twitter, facebook - are full of such energy, and chatty performance, that it's hard to strike the right tone when confronting difficult subjects.The media is bi-polar - swinging wildly between bad news stories about the coming ageing tsunami, care homes in crisis, Alzheimers, generational wars . . . and good news stories about 90 year olds running marathons, 60 being the new forty, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner strutting their stuff. And I feel the same. One day, I'm fit for anything, the next I'm looking into the abyss. I'd like to look away - as most people do, as I've done to my shame, for much of my life - thinking ooh, not yet, not yet. But now here it is. Three score years and ten. My turn.
Most people, me included, don't find it easy to talk about age, ageing and death - I mean why would you? The language and vocabulary of ageing is dominated by discourses of panicky catastrophising or forced and anxious positivity. I'm a writer so I need to find a way of negotiating this period of my life, as far as I'm able, of finding meaning through words. In the early 60s when I grew up it was difficult to speak and think about being a woman without lurching between opposites - sweet-natured/stupid - dependant/burdensome - beautiful/ugly - weak/needy . . . passive/aggressive . . . and it seems to me that 'age' and 'ageing' is discussed today in similar ways.
Back to Brassington. The photographs of gravestones are from St James's churchyard and are here to remind me how lucky I am to have reached this age, to have already had all these years of life. And now the daffodils are coming up on Hillside Lane, February is over - the winter is fighting back but it's nearly gone - the gloom has lifted and this will be our second spring here.
There's another gift that Brassington church is giving me at the moment. The clock is in need of repair and the chimes are out of sync. They're an hour behind - one oclock is twelve chimes and so on. If it isn't fixed by the end of March we'll be two hours behind. I like this - time slowing down, going backwards even . . . soon maybe seventy really will be the new sixty
. . . fifty?
. . . forty?
. . . ?
The end of the beginning
I'm planning to bring this mancinbrassington blog to an end and begin a new website/blog (not sure what form yet) exploring the language and experience of ageing. There are others doing the same and I'd like to make connections for myself and anybody else who's interested. I'll send email and facebook links - so let me know if I haven't got your email and I'll forward the link.
Thanks for being here with me
Heather
It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ John Cleese (as Brian Stimpson in Clockwise.)
Even the Met Office man said it on the telly last night - The weather is just toying with us - an hour or two of sunshine and then the cloud descends - or the ice.
My birthday is in early February and every year as it approaches, a grumpy gloom begins to fall over me. This year it was a big birthday and the gloom has been alleviated by the generous and loving people around me - I've had some wonderful parties and treats - but still, there's a shadow. This could just be end of winter blues - most people seem to feel something similar, we're all hoping for spring and trying not to hope too much in case we're disappointed - but I think it's more than that. When I was younger a birthday was a light in the February darkness, but nowadays it's a reminder of age and ageing, a nudge towards another darkness.
I'm nervous about writing this here. The internet, blogs, websites, twitter, facebook - are full of such energy, and chatty performance, that it's hard to strike the right tone when confronting difficult subjects.The media is bi-polar - swinging wildly between bad news stories about the coming ageing tsunami, care homes in crisis, Alzheimers, generational wars . . . and good news stories about 90 year olds running marathons, 60 being the new forty, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner strutting their stuff. And I feel the same. One day, I'm fit for anything, the next I'm looking into the abyss. I'd like to look away - as most people do, as I've done to my shame, for much of my life - thinking ooh, not yet, not yet. But now here it is. Three score years and ten. My turn.Most people, me included, don't find it easy to talk about age, ageing and death - I mean why would you? The language and vocabulary of ageing is dominated by discourses of panicky catastrophising or forced and anxious positivity. I'm a writer so I need to find a way of negotiating this period of my life, as far as I'm able, of finding meaning through words. In the early 60s when I grew up it was difficult to speak and think about being a woman without lurching between opposites - sweet-natured/stupid - dependant/burdensome - beautiful/ugly - weak/needy . . . passive/aggressive . . . and it seems to me that 'age' and 'ageing' is discussed today in similar ways.
There's another gift that Brassington church is giving me at the moment. The clock is in need of repair and the chimes are out of sync. They're an hour behind - one oclock is twelve chimes and so on. If it isn't fixed by the end of March we'll be two hours behind. I like this - time slowing down, going backwards even . . . soon maybe seventy really will be the new sixty
. . . fifty?
. . . forty?
. . . ?
The end of the beginning
I'm planning to bring this mancinbrassington blog to an end and begin a new website/blog (not sure what form yet) exploring the language and experience of ageing. There are others doing the same and I'd like to make connections for myself and anybody else who's interested. I'll send email and facebook links - so let me know if I haven't got your email and I'll forward the link.
Thanks for being here with me
Heather
