Musings about age.

I am a week and two days older than I was when I wrote my last blog entry.

When I look in the mirror I simultaneously know that I look older, and know I look as young as I ever will do from now on.

When I bend down to pick things up I often find that there is a low grunting noise. Then I realise that I emitted it.

I forget what I went there for, and I am always putting my phone down somewhere in the house and losing it.

This week I am accompanying my eldest child to his first university interview. Actually I am here right now. This seems incredible.

I’m sure I break wind a great deal more than I used to.

My skin is drier. I’ve always had oily skin. Now I need to use hand cream for the first time.

Lately I have taken to staring out of the window at birds. I even put food out for them now and then shake my fist angrily at the squirrels that try to nick it. This is what my Grandparents used to do.

I think about my Grandparents a lot. Is this something to do with my age? I keep thinking about how I will never see them again and I wistfully remember my grandmother’s ice cream floats, and her watercolour paintings and her love or wearing purple and green. And I think about my Grandfather’s yellow knitted waistcoats and his penchant for bow ties and the way he kept his garden shed so neat and tidy. And I think about my other Grandmother and how she would have loved my new kitchen. I would like to show it to her.

Yesterday I went to the local shops to collect Youngest’s glasses from the optician, to get Eldest his student railcard from the station, and to buy food. I bought the food and got the form for the railcard and stood on the high street for a few minutes thinking, I’m sure there was something else. Nope. It’s gone. That must have been all. Then I came home and Youngest said, “Did you get my glasses, Mummy?”

Also lately I think about my past and my so-far-unmet ambitions and wonder whether any of it really matters anyway because we all end up wearing purple and watching birds and farting a lot.

And I think about Eldest about to go to university and begin his life out there in the big world and I think, time and tide waits for no man, and every single day we get older and so we may as well try and enjoy every single second we have left, Carpe Diem, in other words.

And then I get up from my desk to go downstairs to make a cup of tea and realise that I simultaneously farted and grunted, and when I get to the kitchen I’ve forgotten what I went there for and can’t find my phone.

Love E x

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