Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Planning the future

Yesterday morning early I was lying in bed looking at the latest catalogue from Wrap that had dropped unbidden through my letterbox. I was turning down the corners of pages to mark the items I liked.

Later in the morning I inadvertently saw a side view of my face, and my spirits plummeted far lower than my sagging neck. There is no getting away from it: I look my age. The trouble is that inside my head I am still 41. Oh Wrap, you turn my head with your skinny boyfriend jeans and your biker jackets.

Do you have plans for your next life? I do. I was embellishing them yesterday as I sat freezing on a country station platform waiting for a train to take me to Sheffield to see Inside Llewyn Davis. (I dropped that bit in to impress people who think that all I do is watch Rom-Coms, and not critically acclaimed Coen Brothers films.)

So these are my current plans for my next life…

I shall have a body like Audrey Hepburn’s, and I’ll bleach my hair and have it in an urchin cut. My style will be rock chick.

gwen 

I will take up the saxophone at 20 instead of 60, becoming expert at trad jazz improvisation. I will travel during my twenties, and most importantly, I’ll hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and camp there before hiking back. 

At 30, I shall begin to write, and also have my children. By the time they are all at school I shall be a published novelist.

In my forties I will be a hard-hitting and influential columnist, writing about social injustice, and the oppression of the Palestinian people.

In my fifties I’ll have a wild time.

In my sixties I will join the slow lane and spend a lot of time with my grandchildren.

In my seventies, I will take up photography.

After all that, I think I’ll be satisfied.

the heart

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you have a plan this time round? Has it gone according to plan?

Sue Hepworth said...

Me? A plan?
I had no plan. I have spent a lot of my life fire fighting, and dealing with the consequences of having no plan. How about you?

Anonymous said...

You'd only have got bored with it, anyway!

Most of us are following our instincts (hormones?), supposedly making decisions, giving thanks for good fortune when it turns up, but mostly, yes..fire fighting.

Xx

Anonymous said...

My life has flip flopped between putting out or living with my own fires, and making and completing plans. One is dangerous and exciting and the other is deeply fulfilling.

Aging Hippie.