Spot the addition to the fab four line up

I’m writing this the day I turn 64 (in case you were remotely concerned, I won’t be spending all my birthday tapping away on my keyboard. Lovely celebrations are planned for later). Of course, I can’t help but reflect on reaching the age immortalised in that Beatles song, and how it feels to have made it to a birthday which, when I blithely sang about it dancing round my bedroom, seemed unimaginably old.

So with thanks to Lennon and McCartney for making this particular trip around the sun so culturally significant, and with the acknowledgement that their song was penned from the point of view of a man, here are my just-turned-sixty-four-year-old musings

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now

Still hanging on to my hair thank you kindly, in fact it’s probably in better nick than I might reasonably have expected considering the various perm-utations I’ve subjected it to over the years. I’ve written about the business of turning grey and why it’s something I fully embrace in THIS BLOG, but I’m frustrated to report that since it was written, I’m still waiting for my follicles to do me the honour of turning fully grey, so I’m still taking me and them to the hairdressers 3 /4 times a year to have the silver-enhancing highlights that make it look so much better, re-done and my bank account and I are still very much looking forward to the time when that isn’t necessary any more.

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?

Of course Paul and John were referring to quarter to three in the morning, rather than around about tea time, which, in all honesty, is a far more appealing 2.45 to me these days. Which is not to say I don’t enjoy a good night out, I absolutely do. But if a wonderful evening with friends, at dinner, the theatre, cinema or a party, sees me tucked up in bed before the witching hour, that makes it even more perfect in my 64-year-old book.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more

Having grown up watching and helping my father, who was a brilliantly skilled amateur carpenter and could fix pretty much anything, I’ve always been the one to do the practical stuff in my homes. Living on my own I’ve remained fiercely determined to try and sort out any practical or DIY issues myself before accepting that I might need to call in somebody with more expertise.

The difference now I’m in my mid-sixties is that if something requires hefty muscle power, or means having to bend over for any length of time, I’m reluctantly forced to acknowledge that’s now beyond me and my frustratingly vulnerable back. So whilst I’ll happily - and wildly inexpertly - do whatever gardening is needed, including plenty of weeding (at least I think they’re weeds I’m gaily getting rid of), full-on digging is one of those tasks I delegate, and, frankly, don’t miss at all.

As for my knitting skills - ask any of my knitting team at Woman’s Weekly (yes we did have such a thing) about my ability to produce anything that looks even remotely like even the simplest pattern. In spite of their very best efforts and expertise as teachers, and my fervent attempts to master the needles, I remained resolutely useless.

I do wonder, though, whether it’s something I should try again, because maybe having the little more patience. perseverance and tolerance for failure that seven and a bit decades has given me, I might just make less of a fist of it.

Did you spot the interloper in the crowd?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear

My siblings and I spent every summer of our childhoods with my grandparents in their holiday home in Broadstairs, on the Kent coast. My girls spent their summer weekends in their grandparents holiday flat on the sea in Bournemouth and at least two weeks with me staying in various places around the Cornish coastline. Summers by the sea are an ingrained part of my and my family’s life. We still own the flat in Bournemouth and it’s impossible to overstate how much pleasure it brings me to see it starting to be used and enjoyed by the next generation of the family.

Knowing that I have fewer summers ahead of me than behind me, I truly treasure any time I get to spend in MY HAPPY PLACE - by the sea - whether that’s in the summer or any other time of year. Especially, of course, if it’s in the following scenario…

Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave

No Chucks and Daves in my gang of grands. The four of them are all Veras. And having them on my knee is the biggest joy that my sixties has brought (the first was born when I was 59. I wrote about my hopes for her HERE)

I’m a little horrified, but not remotely apologetic, to have completely turned into the cliche of a wildly doting grandparent, and all the more keenly aware of how very much I want to stay fit and well to enjoy them in good nick for as long as possible.

So whilst I’m equally sensitive to the fact that my body is more creaky with each passing year, and the statistical probability of me falling prey to something medially serious increases at the same rate, I do all I can to keep myself active and healthy. At 64 I still exercise pretty much every day, eat a diet that’s as palatably healthy as possible, and get myself checked as often as required (as a result of which I take a daily statin for my cholesterol and am currently having my blood sugar monitored). The maintenance becomes more labourious with the passing years, but unquestionably worth the effort.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?

At three score years and four I am blessed to still have my remarkable, 92 year old, mother, my lovely fella, all three of my siblings, my darling daughters, all their respective partners, and my delicious grand-girls. All of them very much a regular part of my life. Whether they need me, you’d have to ask them, but most of them feed me on a gratifyingly frequent basis (the feeding from my fella tends to be of the restaurant variety. The few occasions he’s cooked for me himself, he’s used every pan and utensil in the kitchen and required a lie down after).

Missing from that list is my late husband. His death, just three months after his 60th birthday, is the reason why, as I reach four more years more than he did, I can, unhesitatingly “state my point of view and indicate exactly what I mean to say”, which is that being the age that seemed so inconceivably ancient from the perspective of that young girl, is truly wonderful. And a gift that I am grateful for every day.

Here’s to being 64.