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‘M’ is for ‘Men’ …  Not ‘Menopause

By

Josie Allen

Synopsis

Georgie has reached the grandiose age of fifty, and she doesn’t like it. Is all that awaits her the slippery slope to old age? Or can life still surprise her? Read on and find out.

 

Part One: … And not Middle-aged either

It has been suggested that the whole affair was a mid-life crisis, which is patently untrue. I may have seen the back of my fiftieth birthday, but I am NOT middle-aged. I don’t have grey hair (well, not if I pay regular visits to the hairdresser), or wear twin-sets and sensible shoes, I wouldn’t be seen dead on a Saga holiday, I shut my ears to the mere mention of pensions, I don’t wash my car on a Sunday (or any other time come to that), I rarely go to bed before midnight, I have never experienced a ‘tropical’ bleeding ‘moment,’ despite my ELDER sister’s gleeful anticipation of this event, or discussed the merits or otherwise of HRT, and am thankfully not subjected to the unwelcome attentions of a pain-in-the-arse, balding bore of an ageing, not-quite-able-to-get-it-up, but what-the-hell-let’s-give-it-a-whirl-anyway, grumpy groper. Saggy boobs? That one, well yes, I have to hold my hand up to, but they’re nothing new, the old spaniels’ ears.

I still haven’t got over being out with my niece last year and this obviously feeble-minded woman saying to me - no doubt in jest, even though she wasn’t laughing, and I most certainly wasn’t – Lovely-looking girl, your granddaughter, isn’t she? I mean, me, a grandma? How totally ludicrous, when I’ve only recently given up on the idea of being a child prodigy, and certainly not yet on meeting Mr. Right, settling down and starting a family. Get your eyes tested, woman. You see before you a fully functioning, sexual (loosely interpreted), avid drinking-and-smoking, drug-taking, up-till-five-in-the-morning, determinedly good time girl. In theory, at least. I have, in truth, lately developed a taste for sitting home alone on a Saturday night, with only the cats for company, watching X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing, munching on my organic salmon, quaffing a mere half bottle of wine, doing the crossword and not answering the phone. Nice and quiet. Bliss. Worrying, but the odd concession has to be made to no longer being in one’s first flush. I am, however, leaving the door widely ajar for HIM, the one with my name engraved on his heart, to come waltzing through and give meaning to my existence on this planet.

You know, I’d love to have a few choice words with those deluded menopausal feminists, peddling that crap about the joys of reaching a certain age, as the French euphemistically like to refer to the milestone of fifty, or forty-five, forty even. YOU’RE WRONG, is all I really need to say to them. And not just slightly off track, but totally and utterly, mind-bogglingly, categorically WRONG. One attains a new understanding of oneself, does one? Yeah, like life’s passing, or already even passed, one by. A serenity and wisdom born of experience? True enough, along the lines of, So this is it then, the best’s behind you and there’s only aching joints, poverty and dwindling friends and relations to look forward to, and that’s if you’re lucky, so deal with it, you’re still walking around, aren’t you? And what about the ability to take stock of one’s life and live the rest of it to the full? I really like that one. Who wouldn’t be ecstatic over the prospect of ticking off, preferably in red so there’s less strain on those ageing, watery eyes, the week’s watch-worthy TV programmes, and a daily stroll to the shop for one’s paper? I know I am. NOT.

NO, NO, NO. I prefer to subscribe to the ‘fifty is the new thirty’ camp … the one where you carry on kidding yourself that you’re young, fit and gorgeous and anything could still happen. Or have I just made that fifty/thirty business up? Well, even if I have, I’ll keep saying it to people, in the hope that it will gradually drift out of the realms of fantasy into the realms of reality. Did you know fifty was the new thirty? You didn’t? Oh yes, that’s what they’re all saying. Fifty is no age for a woman nowadays. Look around you: take Jane Seymour, for instance, must be well into her fifties, and doesn’t look a day over thirty-five. Or Joanna Lumley: she must be closer to sixty and I bet she can still pull the punters. In fact fifty is probably a better age to be than thirty, with all that experience in the bag. No honestly, it’s true. I have it on very good authority. Young men love women in their fifties.

You never know, I may gain the odd convert, one who’s not yet experienced that golden age, even if I can’t manage to win myself over. Blinkers momentarily off, reaching fifty was, in truth, deeply unappreciated, comparable to waking up the morning after the night before with that black hole in the pit of one’s stomach that signals that once again one has unwisely spoken the unpalatable truth in one’s cups and now has no friends left in the world. A close call for the bottle of whisky and five packets of paracetamol job.

My mate, Rosie, and I had a ‘still in our forties’ party a few days before, to celebrate, our birthdays being around the same time. She wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening, so didn’t invite anybody at all and sat in a corner all night trying to disappear. I invited everybody I’d ever known, from all corners of the globe, drank copious amounts, threw myself about the place in a parody of dancing, fell over a few times and stayed up all night spouting garbage. Thought it was cool and clever at the time. Now it merely seems sad and in denial.

I spent my actual birthday night all alone in a bubble of madness. The evening hadn’t started out too badly: going out for dinner to one of my favourite restaurants, now sadly on the list of ‘restaurants that can never be visited ever again,’ with my sister, Sam, and closest friends, as one should spend one’s birthday in a civilised world. Or so I  believe.

I’ve never got birthdays. I understand the protocol perfectly: people smile at you and wish you Happy Birthday, give you presents, which you ooh and aah over, they toast your health and everybody generally has a nice time. That’s what seems to happen on other people’s birthdays anyway. Mine frequently end in disaster, rather like Christmas, which I loathe even more. Mainly they’re a reminder of what I’ve failed to do in my life and what little time I’ve got left to achieve whatever it is I ought to be achieving, if only I knew what it was.

I mean, take presents for instance: all very well, but totally overrated. All eyes upon you, a fervour of anticipation, as you rip off the paper, to find … yet another - probably purple, because everybody knows you’re a purple person – pair of dangly earrings to add to the ‘dangly purple earring’ collection. And the, Great, another pair of bloody purple earrings, momentarily flickers there for all to see before you find yourself uttering, They’re lovely, really nice, thanks ever so much, just what I wanted.

I’m an ungrateful cow. Even in the unlikely event that someone actually gets it right, I still manage to look as if they’ve got it wrong.

What does one actually need? (And God help anybody that gets me what they think I need for my bloody birthday. A new washing up bowl? Yeah, right. Stick it up your jacksie, mate. One of my best friends – not wanting to name names, but it’s only thanks to my magnanimous personality that Rosie’s still on my Christmas card list - actually once bought me a toilet seat for my birthday. Can you believe that? A bleeding toilet seat, which didn’t even fit and turned out to be for a commode, but then she does work in an old folks’ home, so it was probably going spare. Just because she was sick of getting her leg pinched every time she needed a wee, or worse, round at mine.

What does one want even that one doesn’t already have by the age of fifty? Apart from a large house in the country, with a swimming pool and room for a pony, and one’s dream man to share it with naturally, or living next door, or preferably a few miles away, to be brought out when required, for fixing things or driving one to restaurants so that one can get legless whilst he looks on and laughs appreciatively at one’s amusing banter; and for occasional other business, should one be in the mood. Not another purple pot fucking dragon to clutter up the already cluttered place, that’s for sure.