No comfort from strangers....

I have a friend who is not so much dating as 'flinging' with a man who broke her heart over 20 years ago. He married the girl he'd dumped her for, now he's divorced. Home alone, he presumably mused upon his past.... a common event when the present goes wrong and we can't see a future. He found her on Facebook. She's not mad about him but she was free. Another friend was 'reunited' by mutual friends, with a man with whom she'd had a one-night stand 25 years earlier. Both now divorced with kids growing up, they managed 18 months of romantic bliss until France (the country that is) put an end to it. I myself clocked up several years with the good friend of a good friend, a man whose path I'd crisscrossed for over 20 years, until his mid-life crisis proved you really can't teach an old dog new tricks, but that's a whole other story (as Norman Mailer's last wife so brilliantly put it: 'I bought a ticket to the circus. I don't know why I was surprised to see elephants....') In fact, just recently I was approached by two gentlemen callers: one from the very-long-time-ago past, the other a mere ten years ago, both passing through and in need of company.

It's a story I keep hearing recently: 'we actually met years ago....'. Maybe it's an age thing. When you've been around for quite a lot of years there's been enough time for divorce or death to kick in. And there is something strangely comforting in a past remembered if not shared, a suggestion of known provenance rather than the leap of faith into the unknown arms of a stranger. Which has it's place. And it's time. But is a return to the past a good move? Or are we trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? If it didn't happen then, why will it work now? Or was it just the timing that was out, the planets wrongly aliened, the fact you'd already let the wrong one in?

The joy of dating past forty is no less pockmarked by pain, than at any other time. In fact it's worse. Devoid of youthful resilience and an endless supply of potential suitors, it's a tough call. The Internet, that bastion of open-hearted lust monkeys, is no place for old people. The extremely attractive, financially sorted girlfriend who'd flirted with a few virtual dates before she found love in the arms of the old flame from France, recently returned to the net and decided to be honest about her age of 55. Nothing, no one, zilch, zero, not even one of the bald boys. Embracing her maturity, she tried an over 50s site and yes, there were takers, but.......they were all so old. Is the only way forward to go backwards? It's harder for women, we can't even grow old disgracefully. Take some 50 year old man, fill him full of vodka, sit him at a bar with a fag on (oh those were the days) and women will be queuing round the bloke (see Serge for verification....) try the reverse as a women? Not such a good look. And no one wants to wake up looking like Bill Wyman. Oh the injustice of aging.......

Top tip: keep young and beautiful with 2 parts flaxseed (also known as linseed, who knew...) 1 part pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds (Neal's Yard make this ready mixed) quick whizz in the grinder and sprinkle on cereal, soups......anything. Am for 2 large spoonfuls a day for all your omega needs.

How old??

I was mooching around Spitelfields Market the other day and a girl approached me and said, "Excuse me, do you have a minute? I'm doing an article for The Times about what it's like to be 40 today." I looked at her for a moment, trying to work out what she meant and than I laughed because I'm turning 50 next year. She apologised and said I looked great at which point I think I levitated, so happy was I to be thought of as a mere 40, a number I once feared. But that's nothing to ........I can't even say it.

I can't believe I'm 49. How did this happen? I feel like I'm only just getting started and now I've passed the half-way point and to be honest I'm not that happy about it because although I didn't exactly have a plan, I didn't plan this. I sort of thought growing old would equal growing up, with a proper husband, an ordered life instead of youthful chaos, holidays abroad and the joy of Radio 4's 'You & Yours'. But no. Instead of a blue rinse and sensible shows, I'm a single woman in skinny jeans and biker boots, crying into my Argentinean Malbec over the ex-boyfriend like a love sick 18 year-old, while my girlfriends run round with the roll-ups and lists of internet dating sites. I compete with the likes of my teenage son for tickets to festivals and the chance to spend three days in a damp field in some far-flung corner of England, dancing with my arms aloft because while Patti Smith and Annie Lennox are still at it, so too am I. 

In my head I think I'm about 25, it's just the body that has gaily gone on maturing. So just when you think you've got a handle on life, made enough mistakes to learn a few tricks, your knees give out, your back goes and you can't find your glasses. Another birthday used to mean another notch on the ever-expanding belt of middle age but not any more. Old bodies don't need to get bent out of shape while there's yoga and pilates and even yolates......don't ask......and although getting off the sofa is often accompanied by various creaks and groans, I can still do the downward dog, which is all that matters. 

The generation who sold us sex and drugs and rock and roll said we'd die before we were 30, a promise they failed to deliver. So, how does a girl proceed into her 50s? I don't feel I'm done yet and with Madonna and Kim Cattrall blazing a youthful trail, can women of a certain age still dance under the stars and shop in Top Shop?  Or are we deluding ourselves? This was never in the manuel........

Top tip for what to do with the very expensive leather handbag the ex-boyfriend gave you, that you don't want to use but just can't dump: paint it black, with shoe dye, and it's a brand new bag. Unless it's already black, then just get over it.