LIKE the rest of the world, I am addicted to makeover programmes – other people’s badly chosen tattoos, other people’s tatty homes – show me the operation transformation and I’ll show you another night on the McCann sofa with the hand firmly dipped in the biscuit box.
The trouble is that right now I think I might need a personal transformation. A friend who had not seen me in a long while told me she spotted me out for a sunny morning walk recently with my very handsome son.
Only it wasn’t my very handsome son – it was my very handsome husband. I am not over it yet.
My big hulk of a 19-year-old son would rather not be seen out walking with his ma, never mind linking her. He’d rather stick red hot needles in his eyeballs.
I told said son what had happened and he said: “Nonsense mum, dad doesn’t look that young, he looks at least 40.”
Talk about chucking another big black pneumatic tyre on the bonfire of my vanities – said dad is a couple of years over the half century and a good six months older than me.
He just can’t seem to put on weight – it’s genetic, he tells me. So that the spare tyre in our family is firmly around my waist.
Sausages, steak, big fat bowls of creamed rice – nothing counts with the two men living here. But one teensy weensy packet of Revels goes straight onto Ms Lardy Ass’s nether regions.
I think it is to do with man the hunter, woman the gatherer and the female need to sustain and nurture. Or else it is just down to bad genes.
Also, the reason said man is in such good nick, is moi – all that TLC and early morning figgy porridge does wonders.
The lesson is that some serious age damage limitation is needed. To anyone out there who is feeling the same, just look at yourself as your winter garden, on the cusp of blossoming into spring. It is time for a little personal weeding, spraying and general sprucing.
I like to think of it as taking a lawn mower to my winter legs and applying a large liberal spray of tan to all over. Maintenance comes at a price and it isn’t all linked to your wallet. It involves doing all those things you never ever want to do, like standing on a set of weighing scales.
The joy of aging is that your eyesight goes downhill and you can’t read what it says on the dial – Yet another reason not to go Specsavers. Savour the moment, I say.
And one joy of being over the 50 mark is revisiting things from your past that brought joy. Long, long before the makeover programmes, on a planet far from earth were the Clangers.
They were cute little whistling creatures and the queen of them all was the Soup Dragon. There were no words – they didn’t need any – just all that whistling. It was a language that children could understand.
And now they are back. The Clangers are returning to our screens. Only the little knitted creatures are in glorious technicolour, whereas all my memories are black and white.
Will the children of today take them and their gobbledegook to their hearts?
I hope so. They had Pingu and, for a time, Pingolese was a second language around these parts. Assorted children I have known were fluent in it.
“Nook, nook” meant huge delight or absolute and utter frustration at being denied the last jammy dodger. And going with the spirit of the times and the fact that the programme makers are well aware that adults have to watch these children’s programmes too, perhaps Ivor the Engine – the little Welsh engine who wanted to sing n the choir – and Noggin the Nog will come back too.
Noggin was a norseman, like one of the little carvings of the Lewis chessman you can see in the British Musuem.
It is hard to believe that some of those children’s favourites were made by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin in a disused cowshed in Kent. Postgate told their stories in reassuring voice – gentlemanly and innocent.
How the world has changed since Bagpuss and the Clangers with their flute voices and the gobbledegook Soup Dragon bossing everybody about. Soup, ah, there’s the connection. Operation Transformation involves pot loads of soup – I’ll be swimming in the stuff. The sun may be splitting the trees but tis a far way from the swimsuit and the lilo, I am.
But in six weeks... who knows? Maybe I’ll look like my other half’s sylph-like grand-daughter... I wish.
ENDS
