When I'm older...Oh, wait a miunte

Forgive me, dear reader, for writing such a self-obsessed and narcissistic blog post. I was half way through composing a piece about cover versions of songs then got side-tracked.

It started with a hair colour. My highlights were growing out and I could neither afford nor be bothered to have them done. A couple of weeks ago I got my kindly, obliging other half to help me do the roots of my hair - not to highlight them, you understand, but to colour them with my natural hair colour so it just looked like I had massive root re-groth, without the aggressive grey, pampas grass that would insist on sprouting up. So, basically, I was trying to pretend to be younger. Then I started to toy with the idea of dying my hair a purple-pink hue, which (in my imagination) would be picked up nicely on the highlighted bits of hair. I decided to be sensible and buy a wash-out spray rather than a permanent dye. I surprised the kids one day by spraying loads of it in after they got home from school (didn't risk doing the pick up like that). As the vivid purple colour faded to a more pastel violet, my daughter looked me thoughtfully and said:

“You look like you’ve got grey hair, with purple on top.”

Great! I thought. I’ve given myself a blue rinse!

So yesterday, still with a burning desire to look younger, I purchased a semi permanent colourant - a tube of red goo. On the box it looked red red, when it came out of the tube it was cherry red, however the resultant colour was a disgusting maroon. Worst of all, I thought, it made me look older.

“Why are you so obsessed with trying to look younger?” The old man asked me.

It's alright for him, he is unequivocally handsome - 'Handsome Al’ I call him. He might not be to everyone's taste but he has the cheekbones and the velvety eyelashes and the winning features that people seem to go for. I’m more of an acquired taste like olives, pickled walnuts and gin (urgh it tastes like earwax, hmmm, it's bitter but refreshing, hey but think of the vitamins in earwax!).
I’ve lost count of the number of women who’ve told me how lucky I am, with various degrees of snideness. 'You’re so lucky!’ they say - subtext - how on earth did you manage to snag him, you ugly bi-atch! My dears, I’m simply longing to say, next time I get one of those 'you're so lucky’s’ - "Yes, I ensnared him with my magic vagina." Do you dare me to?

Anyway, I digress, I’m not trying to look younger because people keep implying I’m punching above my weight, we’ve been together donkey's years and that's always been the case.
Is it because I saw a holiday photo, taken this year, where I managed to look both 6 months pregnant and like one of my great aunts. I wonder whether I’ll ever be pleasantly surprised by a photo rather than the total opposite. I’ve tried to embrace body positivity, I really have, but it's rather hard to do it in practice.

Is it because there are a couple of young folk in my office who were born in the 1990s? My new line manager was born the year that I met my husband. I mean, I was a teenager but I am technically old enough to be his mother. I keep trying to mask this by never mentioning Vesta curry or the miner’s strike but I fear that something will give the game away. I shouldn't worry about this - it's all meaningless, really and if I was advising anyone else I’d say to pay no heed to how things  look, just focus on your own happiness and fulfilment but even so…

Is it because I was an 'older’ Mum? My younger daughter keeps asking me how old I was when I had her and I keep knocking ten years off and telling her  that I was 29! Rather than have her blab my age to all her friends.

I think though, the stupid maroon hair dye was the last straw! I’m going to embrace my age. It's a fact, as much as my weight (gah!), eye colour and IQ. I’m going to shout about it more - I’m 44! Deal with it! I was listening to Suede first time around. I'm going to be 45 in 3 months time and that's fine, really it's fine, no really it's fine and if I hadn't been born in the '70s I’d never have seen Bagpuss. Well, maybe I would have as it still seems to be everywhere and I show it to my kids but I would never have seen Ludwig - the bizarre animation about the musical egg, which nobody but me seems to remember.

Yep, I’m not going to lie anymore, I owe it to the sisterhood. Ageing is just a fact. When I am older I shall not dye my hair purple.

My favourite Film

The Squid and the Whale ⭐⭐⭐⭐

2005: Writer/Director Noah Baumbach

Great ‘80s music amidst family strife.

The Squid and the Whale (2005) is set in Brooklyn in 1986 and details the breakup of the marriage of middle class intellectuals, Bernard and Joan, and the effect this has on their sons, Walt and Frank.

You might expect a film about divorce to tip over into sentimentality but The Squid and the Whale never does.  Instead it combines dark humour with hyper realism and gives an unflinching portrayal of the messy emotions involved in a divorce. The adult characters are deeply flawed and they are shameless in their attempts to get the boys on side. There’s a stark contrast between the intellectual pomposity of Bernard’s (Jeff Daniels) speech and the childish way in which he tries to score points off his estranged wife, Joan (Laura Linney).  This is embodied literally at the beginning of the film when the family are playing a game of doubles tennis and Bernard tells Walt to go for his mother’s backhand because it’s weak. The sides are clearly drawn at this point, pre-break-up, Walt allies himself to his father and Frank sides with his Mother.

Jesse Eisenberg’s character, Walt, is a fake, he emulates the grandiose speech of his father - ‘Don’t be difficult’, tries to pass a Pink Floyd song off as his own and recommends books to his girlfriend that he hasn’t actually read, himself.
Younger brother, Frank (Owen Kline), acts out his trauma in intensely anti-social ways.
All the characters are fully formed but perhaps none more so than Laura Linney’s, Joan. Joan is emerging as a respected writer and both her sons are disturbed by her obvious sexuality. Although Joan is portrayed as somewhat selfish, she also displays great insight, when she tells Walt:
‘You think you hate me, but you don’t’
Walt himself only becomes more sympathetic towards the end of the film when he relives a happy memory from childhood and we get to learn the origin of the film’s title.

There’s a touching moment between Bernard and Joan when they discuss the fact that Joan called Bernard’s father and Joan says she misses him (Bernard’s Dad). Both characters seem less defensive at this point and this instance of vulnerability, amongst other glimpses of humanity, save the film from being too brutal.

There is no disputing the fact that The Squid and the Whale is something of a (albeit underground) classic. Its arena of middle class intelligentsia is a world away from where I grew up and yet I got a massive jolt of recognition when I first saw it.  The striking thing is that for a film centred around people who hide behind intellectual facades, it is the most authentic portrayal of the fallout from a divorce that I’ve ever seen.

Noah Baumbach

Writer/Director Noah Baumbach went on to make While We’re Young (2014) and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), amongst others. His films tend to be character driven, rather than plot driven but he always seems to coax brilliant performances from his actors. Adam Sandler is the least annoying I’ve seen him, since The Wedding Singer, in The Meyerowitz Stories.

I'd say that if you are a fan of the films of Woody Allen (before he became problematic) and enjoyed films like Juno and Ladybird then Noah Baumbach films would appeal to you. He's more subtle and just as funny as Judd Apatow, in my opinion, and sometimes it's just good to see a film where a family is more dysfunctional than your own.