welsh hills again

Well somehow I didn't manage to post December's extract from the year of being sixty two, principally because I didn't write it!  Somehow the coming of Christmas, trying to keep up with my Spanish and the upheaval of house redecorating just squeezed my writing time into non existence.  I had been intending to spend a chapter looking at the upsides of ageing.  From the volume of stuff you read about "anti-ageing" you might suppose that there aren't any upsides, but that's not true.  My mother used to tell me in her forties, fifties and sixties that she would not want to go back, that she was genuinely happy to be where she was in her life.  She would I suspect have stopped the clock before my father began to be ill but even that would have taken them both well into their seventies.  I never totally understood why she was so content with the age she was when we had those conversations but I could see that it was true.   Knowing that has given me a sense,...

Here is the October extract from the year of being sixty two, rather late in the month!   Eventually we all become orphans, unless we die young and leave others to cope with the mess.   It’s odd then that it should be such a surprise.   My mother’s death though was a surprise.   One day she was apparently well, if tired, coping with my father’s motor neurone disease cheerily, orchestrating a move for them into an assisted living flat with customary energy and skill.   The next day we were driving desperately behind the air ambulance that was taking her to Exeter, my father talking determinedly about how they would manage her convalescence, me with a cold pit of fear in my stomach.   A major heart attack.   She was dead in her nightie on the bed in the recovery room when we got there, her hair askew, marks on her chest and arms from where they had tried to revive her.   She looked very small and very alone and totally gone.  ...

Here is the September extract from the longer pieces I am writing about the experience of getting older.  I am a bit self conscious about this one.  It feels a bit "showy offy" to talk about going to the gym somehow.  It is not about that.  It is about trying to engage more with what the body can do than with what it looks like.  Easier said than done.  I love to hear what you think so please tell me! Let’s face it, the aging body is not a pretty thing:   wrinkled knees and elbows, the saggy skin which hangs on your arms, turtle necks, veined legs.   But it is not just what the body looks like, it is also what it can do.  For the last few years of his life my father in law lived with us.   He made it to ninety five and was always remarkably, even relentlessly cheerful.   As a young man and right through middle age and beyond he had been strong.   He missed that strength when it disappeared on him as old age took ho...

So here is the first slice of the longer piece I want to write, in fact this is what I wrote on my second day at The Hurst on the Arvon course in that sudden rush of realisation of what I wanted to say.  I don't intend to blog the whole thing, even assuming I can write it, but I thought I would try to put an extract on every month and this is August's.  I hope that the discipline of committing myself to do that will keep me writing and I also hope that you will tell me what you think.  I love feedback although I think that too much might make me too self conscious so with luck this will be a balance that works for me.  I hope it works for you too. The year of being sixty two. Ageing isn’t linear.   It happens in sudden leaps and swoops.   One day you look in the mirror and your chin has gone.    Your chin which has been with you all your life has suddenly disappeared and in its place is a soft fleshy decline from your head to your nec...