A Certain Age

         There’s a phrase, ‘a woman of a certain age’, which I understand to be a euphemism employed to avoid the indelicacy of stating frankly that she is past her physical prime. Whether it’s still widely used I can’t be sure, but it comes to mind when I reach for a description of several women with whom I have recently had brief interactions. If pressed, I would estimate their ages as being in the sixth or seventh decades, ‘old lady’ territory from the perspective of a youngster, but near contemporary from mine.

          During my recent solo expedition in our campervan (named ‘Bluey’, for its livery), I came to realise that, even though it is 23 years old, our vehicle, far from being scrapworthy, is approaching the point at which the description ‘vintage’ might be considered appropriate. At the entrance to the car park at Scotney Castle, there were two volunteer attendants. I was explaining to the teenaged boy that I had not reserved a space, when his apparent supervisor, an ‘older’ woman came over, barged him aside and smilingly reassured me that I was welcome in the overflow field. “Just turn right by that hedge. Nice van, by the way”, she said.

          The very next day, intrigued by a roadside sign that read Off the Beaten Track, I turned into an extensive, leafy compound to discover a sprawling, scruffy shopping complex of shacks and yards in the indie/alternative/brocante styles. It being late in the day, everything was closing, but the person in charge of locking up, a woman of a certain age, enthused over the project and insisted on showing me around. “Come back tomorrow, when it’ll be busy”, she said.  I replied that I might and reached for my key. “I like your van”, she added, as I climbed in.

          When, later, I told my Other Half about the compliments Bluey had received, she immediately put a different spin on things. “So, you’ve been picking up old ladies then?”

          More recently, in the company of a couple of friends, the four of us boarded the Cremyll ferry for the eight-minute crossing over the river Tamar. The open prow is fitted out with bench seats that are coveted in fine weather, such as pertained at the time. The other three bagged a section, leaving me with not quite enough space between them and a woman of a certain age (and her backpack). “Excuse me”, I said to her, “any chance you might budge up a bit?” She shifted and, as I parked myself beside her, she said, “A slight chance”, which I took as a compliment on the slimness of my hips.

          Whether or not that was her meaning, it was certainly an invitation to a conversation between the two of us. After the usual niceties, she told me about herself. She had seen The Odyssey and it had reawakened her interest in the classics (all of which she had read). She also told me where she lived and that she had to hurry off to her book club as soon as we disembarked. And, in what might have been a last attempt at a pick-up line, she told me her name.

          Walking home, my OH made capital out of this and the other incidents to amuse our friends with her theory that I am in the habit of picking up “old ladies”, as she put it.

          That same day, I overheard a conversation between two, let’s say, ‘retired’ women who were walking just ahead of us. They were talking about the recently introduced electric scooters that can be hired around the city. “I hear they can be quite dangerous”, said one. “Yes”, said the other and, after a brief pause, “Mind you, I must admit, I’d quite like to have a go on one”.

          Now, there’s a game old bird, I thought.

 

 

  

     

 

The Restoration

         This morning, on the radio, I listened to Rupert Lowe, the hectoring leader of the political party, Restore Britain, express his stance on immigration with the frequent assertion that “most people would agree (with me)”. So, to what point in time does he want to ‘restore Britain’ and how does he know that most people concur (with him)?

          The latter point may be dismissed as irrelevant: what he may assert without proof, I may refute without proof. As to the former, there is a great deal of context to be considered, which is what I’ve been doing this past week, as it happens. In Devon, Dorset and Sussex I have enjoyed experiencing traces of British history and the cultural residue left in its wake.

          The 4000-year-old stone circle at Kingston Russell (Dorset) was the oldest of these but, unfortunately, I couldn’t quite locate it. After a two-mile walk along a private farm road and in searing heat, the last stretch lay across fields, uphill and without signposts. I chose the wrong side of the fence and ended up lost in a crop of sweetcorn, with no sightline to the stones. I did subsequently identify an alternative route but, since it entailed passing through a large herd of cattle, my enthusiasm waned and I trekked back to the campervan, pondering the while whether Britain in the Late Bronze Age had been a better place, you know, before the immigrants invaded.

          It’s a moot point, of course, because the Romans, Vikings, Angles and Saxons all turned up before too long, each wave flooding ‘our’ island with its foreign genes and funny ways. Then, there were the Normans. By coincidence, I stayed at a campsite near the Sussex town of Battle, named for its location as the site of the 1066 defeat of King Harold by William, Duke of Normandy. There is a signpost to the actual battlefield, though more recent evidence suggests it took place closer to a roundabout in the centre of town. Whichever, I didn’t visit it anyway, as I’ve nursed a particular grudge against that last wave of newcomers ever since I saw the tapestry at Bayeux back in 1982.

          That grudge is reinforced each time I visit a stately home, the seat of such-and-such a family that has owned it since they built it on land given to them by William as reward for their support in his conquering endeavour. And when, thereafter, those families used the social media of the day, portrait paintings, to glorify their lineage, boost their status and persuade everyone else to consider them a class apart – aristocracy – they pulled off a great con.

          I doubt that Restore Britain is considering a return to pre-Norman times, as that would entail a lot of property being returned to the commons. Perhaps they have in mind a more recent period like, say, the 1980s, when the concept of common ownership was sufficiently diminished to the point where most of what remained in our ownership could be taken without much resistance, or “privatised”, to use the capitalist euphemism for theft.

          But heritage isn’t all about property. Back in Devon, I poked my nose into the week-long Sidmouth Annual Folk Festival, a celebration of traditional forms of music and dance created, curated, performed and, to this day, still owned by common people. I saw youngsters doing clog-dances that originated in the Lancashire cotton mills of the industrial revolution; Morris dancers performing stories from medieval England; hurdy-gurdy players teasing tunes out of unwieldy instruments invented in Europe a thousand years ago; and impromptu bands of assorted musicians playing jolly, Celtic jigs in packed-out pubs.

          Perhaps, in a few years’ time, we may expect the programme to include more recently integrated forms of British folk music – African drumming, say, or oud-accompanied middle eastern love songs, both of which I would pay good money to hear. Whether most people would agree remains to be seen.