Tuesday 23 September 2014

When I'm 64

I'm sixty four next month.  Yesterday for the first time ever a young man offered me his seat on the bus.Mind you there was a student on crutches on the bus last week and I offered him my seat. He was mortified.

Okay, so what have I learned?
God help us.

1 There are very few problems which money cannot sort out.

2. Nobody loves you more for being thin.

3. I hate cheap food and wine. I'd rather starve.

4. My chances of marrying Brad Pitt have gone down to nil. There's no point in asking for him for Christmas. I'll only be disappointed again.

5.Good champagne smells like sick and tastes like heaven.

6.Living alone is better than putting up with a moaner, a poor man or anybody who comes anywhere near my newspapers, my computer or my car. Or the remote control for the television.

7. You get what you pay for, like my Dad always said which is why Matfen Hall and Apple computers are the best.

8.Living in a small city like Durham is wonderful. Concerts, restaurants, a champagne bar, the Gala theatre. The student productions, the library, the cathedral, a lovely house with all the original fireplaces and stained glass windows and best of all friends.

9.I'm thankful for the countryside around me is wonderful. I love the Durham dales better than anywhere on earth and spend my summers there, watching the pheasants and the bunnies waffling around the fields.

10.God, I feel lucky to be here. I've survived widowhood, breast cancer, the loss of my job several times, being orphaned and hardest of all so many of my friends have died of accidents, cancer, heart disease and old age. I love my friends, here and in the past and think about them all the time.