Blame It On Eve.

There is but one great thing about ageing.
The older you get the less likely you are to give a toss what other people think.
That's it. End of story.
Everything else is just one step closer to the grave.

Humphrey scoffs every time I tell him it's time to trade me in for a newer model.
"It just wouldn't be worth it," he says, "I'd never see a return on my investment and I can't afford a later model."
He's right of course.  I am a very expensive accessory, but of course I am, as I constantly remind him, worth every cent.  He doesn't reply because he's too busy looking at vintage motorcycle magazines.
Cheese, wine and vintage motorbikes are desirable when they have weathered a few years because they become more rare and thus more interesting.
People become more rare, because they die, and sometimes less interesting because their world contracts around them.  It is something I'm fighting.  So God help me I will not lose my curiosity!
Unfortunately I'm more or less doomed to lose everything else (like my dazzling good looks?)

Well, my is duco is looking a little shabby and a bit of the shine has gone.  There is a bit of rust on the chassis and the motor runs a little warm - at the wrong times.  I don't start well in the mornings and can be temperamental in the evenings and warming me up can be touch-and-go.

OhforGodsakesImreadyforthescrapheap!

For you girls nipping at my heels in the age stakes....I'll let you in on a few little home truths.  When Helen Mirren and Charlotte tRampling  waffle on about being unafraid of ageing, how the best is yet to come and they feel sexier than ever.  It's crap.  Or oestrogen patches.
Maybe it's the cocaine, but they're lying through their veneered teeth.
In their spotlight you can afford highlights and lowlights and backlights and soft lights and vaseline on the camera lense.  The rest of us will just have to get extra Berli scaffolding ..... and nothing short of an industrial vacuum is going to help those thighs.

The day I hit a certain birthday milestone two tussocky grows sprouted from my chin.
Yes, a beard. 
There I was, minding my own business at the traffic lights and BAM!
God gave me a beard.
It's his little practical joke. Blame it on Eve.

Now, when I have my little glazed-eyed-goodbye-i'm-in-theta moments my fingers immediately fly to my chin and fossick....for tussocks.  I can spend hours hunting down hairs and delight in strangling them before I yank them out.  I don't keep them though.  The memory is enough.  The bastards come back as surely as the sun rises anyway.

Speaking of keeping odd things...allow me a meander.  We humans are decidedly odd. Not only do we find American sit-coms funny,  we also have a tendency to collect things.   Remember that episode of Collectors where the girl collected pubic hair? What about that woman who kept nail clippings?  There was another who collected navel lint?  FORTHELOVEOFGOD! I'm sure there is a medical diagnosis for these pastimes.

I recently met a girl who used to sit in front of the tele and pick her toenails.  Her mother had a tiny soapstone urn, probably like the ones you can buy in fair trade shops, on their coffee table.  Into that little urn went the toenail clippings. This girl went overseas for a time.  After a while her parents received a package.  With great excitement Mum and Dad opened their parcel.....only to find a little packet of toenail clippings.  The note said "Please put in little urn."  When Mum opened little urn, which she considered to be purely decorative and not particularly useful, she found years of carefully pruned toenails - and a chunk of skin.
The girl had kept her plantar wart as well.
True story.

Back to Eve. Actually, when you think about it we should really be burning her effigy every International Women's Day.
We women have been blessed with periods, PMT, childbirth, the glass ceiling, menopause, and then general mental and physical degeneration.
Did I mention menopause?  That's right MEN-o-pause.  We turn into men.  Any time from about 45 onward generally.
It starts with tussocks of hair, on your face.  The hair on your head gets kind of wiry.  Your skin gets sort of leathery and you lose....um....things....down there.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the me that is me right now.  My mind, that is.  The way I'm more confident than ever and actually value my own opinion (whether other people do is debatable).  That's maturity.  But physically, ageing sucks. Why else would my girlfriends and I suddenly turn into gym junkies and health-food freaks?  It's because we've noticed a groaning in the joints, a sprain that doesn't heal as quickly as they used to and it's just getting too damn hard to chase the kids.

Currently I'm in Ageing Phase One, which I outlined above, and as the Devil is my witness I shall go down fighting the rest.