Aging (Dis)gracefully
Posted under Witterings
Awww, look! There’s the wife looking super fine, super cool, superdooper on her birthday yesterday. She’s actually 105 now but, by the miracles of modern science and good skincare, she doesn’t look a day over 35 does she? There are vicious rumours of a little post processing ‘help’ but that’s between me, Lightroom and the gun the wife has nailed against my forehead…
Lately I have age on my mind. The big FOUR-OH is looming this year and I’ve decided to embrace the fecker with my list 39 things to do before I’m 40. The theory is that I will arrive on my FOUR-OH birthday feeling smug and fulfilled rather than old and baggy. Also, over Christmas, I was truly delighted to learn that my Wii Fit age is 51. My mother-in-law (60 something) tried it too, just for a lark, and her Wii Fit age is 46. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. Basically, I’m ancient and knackered already, and nothing but botox and a tediously strict macrobiotic diet can resolve it. Or so I thought…
Well, hoorah, just in the nick of time I have discovered the secret of youthfulness and you don’t find it in a pot of face cream or a syringe full of toxins. Instead you’ll find your mispent youth lurking on the dancefloor, clad in a pair of sparkley high heeled sandals and a swishy skirt. Even the men. Yes, ballroom dancing is the end to all our aging woes and I have photographic proof.
Whilst shambling through the Royal Festival Hall yesterday on our zimmer frames, me and the wife happened upon some kind of Strictly Come Dancing tea dance ‘thing’ going on. It was hugely popular, mostly frequented by men of a ‘certain age’ and their rather young Asian wives but let’s skip that part. My point is this…the ladies of a certain age (well in to their 60s) were so elegant, agile, light on their feet, balletic, athetic, jolly, gorgeous and looked decades younger than they were. Look at this beauty…I wouldn’t air my mummy arms in public even now, and I’m only 39…respect to the Toned Armed One…and check out the nipped in waist and lovely pair of pins…
Me and wife looked on helplessly having rebuffed offers to dance with her dapper partner on the basis that, er, we can’t actually dance. “But it’s the cha cha cha!”, he retorted looking, rightly, appalled, “EVERYONE can do the cha cha cha!”. Seriously, we can’t. So he danced with the Audrey Hepburn look alike and we photographed them strutting their stuff with such panache.
‘Audrey’ was much in demand as a dance partner, but when she wasn’t she sat on the side with her two lovely friends and waited like a proper lady.
I congratulated them on their wonderful dancing and told them that they’d made me wish I could dance. They very earnestly told me that I MUST learn, and that dancing keeps you youthful. And there they sat…the proof of the pudding….looking years and years, 10 years probably, younger than they actually were.
So I’m hoping my list of 39 things to day before 40 is editable? If so, I’m taking off ‘making biscuits for the first time’ off the list because (a) it’s toally lame anyway and (b) I could just nip down the shops and buy a packet couldn’t I? But the pursuit of guaranteed youthfulness? You can’t buy that in a packet down the shops can you?
So, who’s up for the cha cha cha with me? My dancecard has spaces but, be warned, I will likely clumsily stamp on your foot with my sparkly shoes. Sorry about that.
