Sunday 14 October 2007

Ten Years Younger


Recently, when I look in the mirror, I have been caught off-guard by the drab spinster glowering back at me.

I have spent the last year mentally pushing a big, yellow, gelatinous jelly '30'. Like many things, it's been getting softer and gloopier, so the more I push, the further my hand slips into it, and eventually I will be totally engulfed.

So, it was with some surprise that I realised, on 7th October 2007, that it was actually my 29th birthday, and that I have still another year to push.

However, it would seem that, for the moment at least, the drab spinster lives only in the mirror. In the three days before my last non-thirty birthday (until I hit forty...), a different random stranger on each day was deluded enough to mistake me for, quite specifically, a nineteen year old.
The most alarming element of this, however, was that instead of this filling me with the usual indignant anger (generally involving a great deal of ranting on about how people must therefore think I am a silly teenager, with no life experience, and are not giving me credit for the limitless wisdom I have amassed during all my many decades of traipsing through life's rich tapestry etc etc), I was actually secretly rather pleased! People always said that one day it would be a compliment, and it would seem that that day has finally arrived. I really must be getting old.

I must also be going through some sort of pre-mid-life-crisis. On a recent shopping trip, it was all about bringing back the '90's "style" as I expressed it back then.

"Out!" with the poker straight hair of my girlhood fantasies, and, "Welcome back!" kinky-kinks!

"Off!" with the twenty-somethings, working-girls, cropped jacket, and, "Long time no see!" to the second-hand, velvet jacket with the star on the lapel!

"Farewell!" to the London-look booties, and, "Aloha!" to the Doc Martins of which dreams were once made!

It is possible that people have been mistaking my age because I have started dressing in a near-identical fashion to that of my mid teens. The only differences are that, this time, the DM's are bronze, not green, and that I have made the executive decision to leave the velveteen hat with appliquéd stars festering in my parent's loft alongside the tye-dye t-shirts. There are some levels to which one really should not stoop the second time around.

Who needs Nicky Hambleton-Patent-High-Waisted-Belt-Wearing-Jones? I have given myself a step back in time, and the public's verdict is that I am ten years younger!!

I am.