I have one of these coming up rather sooner than I care to acknowledge. It means going into another era which I feel I am not quite ready for. I think in my head I am at least 15 years younger than I look.

When I was younger, this age seemed impossibly old. For ladies that had short grey hair and sipped tea from china cups, dressed in pleated skirts and wore vintage perfume. The latter is the only thing I have in common with this preconception. I doubted that the older lady version that I turned into wore ‘clumpers’ (my name for chunky shoes and boots), had dyed long blonde hair and several tattoos. 

I sound like a cliché but I am really not. I don't follow any crowd, style or fashion and have never been trendy but I am watching and looking at what the (even) older generation are wearing. Quilted jackets, slip on shoes with gold lame, backcombed bouffant hair, black eye kohl (oh dear I am still wearing this), dark lipstick or reversing the age – slashed jeans, crop tops and bomber jackets are not for me... and that's just for starters.

I read somewhere that women as they get older become invisible. Perhaps we are invisible to much younger men (I am straight) and although happily married, who doesn't love a bit of admiring glancing?

My curves have got greater (I used to be very slim) but I now have aches where I did not before. Lumps, moles, liver spots, extra hair and a muffin top have been added without my consent (overnight??). I've now got more hair on my chin than on my eyebrows (I blame the severe plucking I did in the 80s) and my memory is not the best.

So what do you do? Fight or flight it? I am not a fighter these days but I'd like to think I'd fight a bit more for my fitness, general health and wellbeing and escaping is not something that I do, although it was a modus operandi for so long (if I'd had the actual courage to go through with it).

I'm not wanting to celebrate this milestone but what I can say is that at some points in my life, I thought I wouldn't get to this age. I see it as my goal not only to live my life as best I can, but to honour my mum's memory who passed away two years off the age I will be on my next birthday. I owe it to her, but most of all, I owe it to myself. I've got so much I want to do, so I'll just think to myself what a few have already said to me “age is only a number”.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dearest Liz, happy birthday to meeeee.

For she's a jolly good fellow, Liz is a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us!

Liz

A Moodscope member