The advancing years of life

                                                              

The famous '70' pic!

Hello Everyone,

It is Tuesday February 22nd, and as usual I am preparing a blog for Friday. I have scrolled down the archives and found this piece which I wrote three years ago. Since then I have turned 70 and experienced, like many others, a milestone birthday in lockdown. Last week, or five minutes after this pic was taken, I experienced my 71st birthday during Storm Dudley. I am still wondering how I got here but know that in another five minutes I will be either pushing up daisies with my sister or celebrating 80 but still wondering how I got there! That is life. Our days are numbered. They drift by, we know not how. One day reality dawns. We are running out of days. The past looks far better through rose-coloured glasses and the future is . . . 

 How many of you can identify with this predicament?

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Lady M still here. She wakes up each morning and checks if she's still alive. Her next thought is how did she get to her late sixties without noticing. Then she ponders over the fact that the big 70 is approaching and hopefully she will get a new lease of energy and life. She will no doubt do what she did at 60; namely knock off the nought! At 70 she will declare herself 7 and vow to behave like a 7 year old.

She usually goes into her library and finds the remote control, presses the ON button and half expects to see solemnity because we have a new monarch. No! How does our Queen manage so much at the age of 93? Then she moves over to her computer and presses another switch to engage herself in modern technology which she does not really understand. It was all so simple in the 1960's. The television had two channels and if you wanted to watch the alternative station someone would have to move to the set and manually switch over to 'the other side'. No recording, catch up, or +1. If you missed the programme you missed it but life continued. Then, there's this computer thing which she is seated at now. The entire world is at her finger tips on this thing called the world wide web. When did that happen and what happens when the web goes down? Chaos and disaster. It was all so simple when everything was done by using pencil or pen and paper. Information? Use the library. 

Everything seems to have speeded up as she has slowed down in her senior years. A modern essential appears to be a mobile/cell phone which is permanently attached to individuals either in the hand for texting or by the ear for conversation. She recalls the excitement of a luxury item appearing in her home... a fridge! A telephone was not even an essential item in her youth. They were items with dials and wires and only usually found in businesses. She remembers seeing her first phones. One was in the little red booth by the Post Office in the village and the two others were at her grandfather's and uncle's places of work. They were black and rarities. 

She still has a Wonder atlas from the fifties which has the new air age on it's cover. Travel by air used to be so exciting. Just visiting an airport was a delight watching the few planes landing and taking over for exotic foreign shores. One dressed up to travel and enjoyed the experience. Now one dresses down and endures it.

There are so many things in the twenty first century which puzzle her or do not seem right. The times have changed but she does have a favourite phrase regarding progress... progress is backward! Alas, away with negativity and let us look at the good things which have evolved from progress. Last weekend was Gay Pride weekend. There's a new term which baffled her LGBTQ's so she looked it up on line (she's learning!) Definition: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (or questioning). Really? If you fell into one of those categories in her youth you suffered in silence so it is good that our society recognises that individuals should be free to lead a life that suits them without prejudice. She remembers a couple of gentlemen who lived together in the sixties but insisted they were not homosexual. If they had come out of the closet they faced a jail sentence. Although, she finds it strange when a man refers to his husband and a woman refers to her wife. 

Then there have been all these sex scandals which started with Jimmy Savile. He was clearly a sex offender but it was all swept under the carpet. The case seemed to open floodgates for scores of others to come forward and claim they had been sexually assaulted by celebrities in their youth. Now, rape is rape or non-consensual sex and that is definitely a crime and even more serious if with a minor. However, what concerns Lady M is what are all these so called sexual assaults that women are complaining about? Personally, she thinks a lot of it was probably groping or what was known as 'whs' wandering hands syndrome. Some men were well known for having this and it was common practice to grope or place their hands on various parts of a fully clothed female in a social situation or the work place. It was so rife that if you weren't groped you wondered why. It was not against the law then so how can you be prosecuted for it fifty years later? This puzzles her. Are such women just women with grudges or attention seekers? Are the authorities able to sift out the genuine cases? If so, what happened with Sir Cliff?

Last week she watched The Lionesses playing football for England. Women playing football? Traditionally, a man's sport. She didn't even know they had female teams never mind a world cup for it. Females used to play hockey, lacrosse and netball; males played rugby, football and cricket and all was well in her little world. She loves her Songs of Praise on a Sunday but cannot get over the fact that we now have female clergy and even bishops. She made an appointment at her local GP's with a nurse in the practice and was surprised to be seen by a man. She knows it's over 40 years since we had the sex equality act or whatever it was called and it is normal practice but somehow her brain cannot get used to it. 

She frequently remembers her grandmother who was born during the reign of Queen Victoria and even in her last years still acted as if it were the Victorian era. She expressed her horror at the music, the mini-skirts, the permissive era of the sixties and the general changing times. Lady M would say, "Gran, it's the swinging sixties. Everything's groovy and fab." She did not really understand and strongly disapproved of the modern era. 

Oh dear, she thinks she's turned into her grandmother! 

Love to you all, Lady M xxx