One Year On...what am I now?

‘It’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.’ 

Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)

Almost exactly one year ago I taught my last lesson, spent an emotional day saying goodbye to some dear friends and wonderful, special children and started a new chapter of my life.

It seems like a good time to reflect on what I have enjoyed, what I have railed against and what I have learned in the Land of the Blue Rinse.

It's marvellous - honest it is!

When I meet up with people that I haven't seen for a while, they always ask how I am enjoying my retirement. I feel as if I should say that it’s absolutely marvellous and I love every minute of it, but that would not be entirely true. I have struggled with the enormous change from being at the heart of a busy and challenging school to basically doing what I please. 

I don't regret my decision to retire when I did - I could have carried on for another six years, but recognised the toll working in such a high-pressured environment was having on both my physical and mental health - but I am still seeking a new niche. Strangely, it’s taken the best part of this year to begin thinking about what I could do next. I’ve rekindled my interest in some old hobbies - sewing, gardening, baking - and relished the time to read and listen to music, without feeling the pressure of more important things to do. I was playing tennis two or three times a week, but a stupid knee injury has put paid to that for the time being. I have also just started some voluntary work, for a brilliant charity called Remap.

Thirty miles away - I could cope with that!

Everybody expects newly retired people to travel endlessly, taking advantage of cheap flights and accommodation, and several of my fellow ‘blue rinsers’ seem to do just that. But I am not a happy traveller so we haven’t been very far. We did have a week in Cornwall and have another booked in Italy later this year, but that’s about it. 

At the moment Im feeling like a bit of a failure - ridiculous right? How can you fail at something when you haven't got to do anything? I’m letting the side down! I suppose it all boils down to my perception of myself - I was proud of what I did during my career, and feel like I achieved as much as I wanted to. 

Ironically, while I was actually working, if you’d asked me how I was doing, I would’ve said ‘OK, I suppose, but this went wrong, that was a disaster, should never have done that…’ I clearly find it difficult to accept myself in the here and now. I don't think I’m alone - lots of people spend their time thinking life will be better when they lose weight, they get married, they get divorced, they change job, they have children and on, and on…

Emotional and relieved

This time last year I was emotional and relieved, this time this year I feel as if I haven't made the most of things. I can’t change that - what I can do is find some new challenges (preferably that don’t all involve taking my clothes off!), seek out opportunities to do things I wouldn't normally do, get my knee fixed, stop feeling guilty about having the time to enjoy life and try to master the trick of seeing what I am, right now!

This is me - now. Enjoying life now!

I survived!

So I survived! More than survived, I enjoyed it! Of course, I am referring to my boudoir shoot.

I probably need to rewind to the very beginning. If you've read my previous blogs (here ...and here) on this topic, you’ll have guessed that ‘boudoir shoot’ wasn’t top of my bucket list. It had never even crossed my mind until a friend shared a post on Facebook.

Where it all started...

It was from a photographer, Martin J Patterson, asking for female bloggers, living locally, to take part in a boudoir project. I normally wouldn't have given it a second look, except that this friend (you know who you are!) had tagged my fellow blogger, dear friend and extremely beautiful The Salted Tail! Not me. Despite the fact that I am also female, also local and also a blogger. It is fair to say I got the proverbial hump.

Has Nanny got the hump, Granddad?

I thought about it for a bit, spoke to my blogger friend who screamed ‘DO IT!’, and messaged Martin. Then told my husband… The rest, as they say, is history.

I have already shared, in unblushingly honest terms, my feelings building up to the shoot, but nothing prepared me for how nervous I would feel when the day finally arrived. To say that I was like a bear with a sore head is an understatement - no one could talk to me without me snarling a reply, and the phrase ‘silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ kept playing in my head as I did my hair and make up. 

Of course my eyes looked like this...

At this point I should own up to having watched Youtube tutorials on ‘smokey eyes for the older woman’ and buying more make up in the last week than I have in the last five years! I took a selfie to send to my daughter but deleted it immediately, deeming it to be just too hideous. I sat, bra-less, watching Wimbledon, thinking, ‘What have I done?’ in an anguished internal voice…

Then Martin arrived, and slowly but surely my fears dissipated. He talked me through what to expect, how the session would work and gave me some tips on how to pose. My sister was acting as my chaperone, although at times she mistook ‘chaperone’ for ‘court jester’, pulling faces, provocatively sucking her finger or just being daft.

We have trouble taking each other seriously!

In the end I had to send her out of my line of vision because I couldn't keep a straight face, and I actually found I was taking posing quite seriously! 

I think poor Martin may have regretted his decision to shoot a more mature woman, as he realised that their joints don't move in quite the same way as a younger person’s! Pretty soon his instructions were prefaced with ‘If you can…’ We did laugh though, and I felt surprisingly relaxed with it all.

Exactly

Because Martin was the consummate professional, it didn't feel uncomfortable or awkward - all the things I was dreading, like laying on a bed wearing not very much, looking into a camera, being the focus of attention for over an hour, just weren’t a problem. Me, being me, overcatered (just ask anyone whose been to one of my BBQs!) - I only wore one lot of the underwear I bought and an old shirt - but in the end none of it mattered, and, if I’m completely honest, I was quite disappointed when the shoot finished.

Looking back it all seems quite surreal. I know my husband felt really uncomfortable about it, and admitted to feeling sick the whole time the shoot was happening. This has led me to question what made me pursue it. I love my husband very much and regret having unsettled him to such an extent. The truth is, since I retired I’ve felt increasingly invisible. When you have nowhere specific to go you make less of an effort with your appearance. I’m lucky enough to be married to a man who adores me regardless, but equally who fails to notice when I do put on some slap or a new top. So for a while it was nice to be the focus of attention, to feel that my appearance mattered - to buy new things, to bother to moisturise, to learn new make up techniques. It reminded me of how I felt just before my wedding when, despite insisting otherwise, I really wanted to look like a princess. 

I really felt like a princess!

Some people may think that makes me shallow, but surely you can be attractive, make the best of yourself and still be a worthy person. I’m going to try, anyhow.

As to whether I felt empowered by the experience…well, I face-timed my daughter and felt a bit more comfortable with how I looked in the corner of the screen, I am seriously thinking about buying a new swimsuit and I woke up this morning feeling just a little bit happier in my own skin. 

All this, and I haven't seen the photos yet…of course they could make a difference to how I feel, but somehow I don't think so. And I do promise to share - some of them, anyway!

As a footnote, I must be feeling more youthful. Last night I dreamt I was 41 and pregnant! 😯 

So I'm doing this...

So this happened…

I met with Martin Patterson, the photographer for my boudoir shoot. He admitted on the phone that he’d never photographed a boudoir shoot with anyone in their sixties, but didn’t think that should be a barrier to me working with him.

© Martin J Patterson

I was so nervous about the ‘consultation’, but didn't really need to be. Martin soon put me at my ease and explained how he worked. He seemed to get on with my husband too, discussing focal length and types of camera and I think that helped quell some of his fears too!

While hubby showed him upstairs, I had to complete a questionnaire, so Martin could judge how the shoot would pan out.

*What part of you body are you proudest of? None of it!

*What part of your body would you like us to de-emphasise? All of it!

*What would you like to wear for your shoot? A burka…

In all seriousness, I did find it quite difficult to complete, finally deciding that my cleavage was the bit of me I was proudest of! After a long chat, and looking at some of Martin’s work, we decided we’d go ahead and agreed that he’d be back in touch before the end of the summer.

I really hope it does what it says on the tin...

At this point I felt quite excited and I started to google ‘matching lingerie’. Not only was that a real eye opener, it also meant that, every time I surfed the net I had adverts for knickers popping up all over the place. I duly cleared my cookies, and took myself off to good old Marks! M&S lingerie department in Norwich is HUUUGE and I soon found a couple of bras I liked and that, more importantly, fitted. It then took me and my sister about an hour to find suitable (for ‘suitable’ read ‘large’)matching knickers! I also bought a pretty ‘less is more’ gown and felt quite happy about my purchases. 

Not easy to find...

I sort of forgot about it for a while and then, when I was feeling at my most hideous because my knee injury continues to prevent me from exercising in any way at all, I had a message from Martin to say he’d had a postponement and would next week be okay for the shoot! 

‘Of course, why not?!’I replied…why not? Because you’re a silly old woman who will probably break the camera lens and who won’t even be able to bring yourself to look at the pictures! 

So, to prevent me bottling out, I posted the first part of my blog and was heartened by the encouragement (and gentle mockery) of my friends! I purchased a flagon of industrial strength Immac, had my eyebrows waxed and even bought some eyelash curlers! I have spent this weekend noticing every blemish and imperfection on my face and body to the point where I feel I need to either blindfold myself or cover the mirrors! I googled ‘Preparing for a Boudoir Shoot’ and discovered that everything I need to do I should have already done so, apart from putting sparkly white bed linen on and not wearing a bra while I watch Andy Murray play (not because I’m a hussy, but to avoid strap marks for the first part of the shoot), I’m done! 

Come on Andy - just don't expect me to jump up and down!

   

To Boudoir or not to Boudoir? That is the very scary question!

Challenging the perception that old people are serious!

When I started this blog, as well as giving me something to do, I wanted to challenge some perceptions, be they about autism, mental health and wellbeing, self confidence and old age. I’m not sure whether I have succeeded but I have found that I love writing and had the supreme compliment last month when someone said that I didn’t know her, but she felt that she knew me, because she had read my blog!

An opportunity has recently arisen for me to challenge people’s perceptions of old age in a new, and frankly scary way. I’ve agreed to take part in a ‘boudoir’ photo shoot. For those of you who don't know what that is (my husband needed it explained) boudoir photography is a style of photography consisting of intimate portraits of women, intended for limited viewing. So, I’m getting my kit off, in front of a camera. I’m hoping that it will give me some confidence in how I look, and be, in some way, empowering. At the moment, however, I couldn't be more terrified if was going wing-walking. It has to be said that my hubby is also a little anxious, although I have reassured him that I won’t be leaving home to follow a new career as a glamour model!

Not scary, not scary at all!
(©www.wingwalkdisplays.co.uk)

Since agreeing to this venture, I have questioned myself as to why I would even consider it - I have never been that happy with wandering around in any other state than fully covered. But maybe it is this that I am trying to overcome. I won’t go swimming because I feel judged by other women (always women, by the way, don't much care about the men), but if I can bring myself to pose in my undies and, more importantly, bear to look at the resulting photographs, I’m hoping it will help my self-confidence. Many women, I know, have boudoir shoots as a gift to their husbands or partners. In my case, it will be a very much more of a personal challenge.

Does my boudoir pass muster???

So, my anxieties…well, for one thing, its happening in my house - is it suitable? Do I need new bed linen? What if I’m judged for my decor?

I have a propensity to make inappropriate comments when I feel embarrassed or awkward - telling the nurse carrying out my mammogram that ‘boobs are a bit like playdough really’ was not a good idea! How will I manage to keep my mouth shut?

So much like play dough...

And don’t get me started on my body…lumps, bumps, muffin tops. How will I appear confident and relaxed? I have spoken to the photographer and he seemed very nice. He’s coming to do a consultation in a couple of weeks and I’m sure he’ll reassure me. 

My knicker drawer - its all grey, so it matches, right?

Then there's underwear. I’m a ‘grab what’s clean sort of woman’ so will definitely need something that at least matches. I’ve looked at various boudoir photos - on Pinterest! Who knew?! - and some women cover up with a shirt or gown, in a less is more kind of way. That’s quite appealing! I suppose if nothing else its an excuse to go shopping.

The next thing on my list of worries, which is probably silly because I’m planning to challenge people’s perceptions, is um, people’s perceptions.

Proud, independent, gin-drinking woman...

I’m a proud independent woman and wonder if people will think less of me for doing something that focusses, ostensibly, on my appearance. Is this what I went to Women’s Rights rallies for in the seventies? Well actually, I suppose it is, in the sense that it’s my body, to do with what I want. But what about my family? My children are fine with it, but my step sons? Their wives? My nephews? Aaagh, I’ve been telling them to read my blog, and now I maybe don't want them to! But I will have autonomy over which pictures I share, so the ‘less is more’ approach will probably, almost definitely, be employed!

As you can see, I’m talking myself in and out of it - I can pull out at any point if I want to. Will I go through with it? Watch this space…

Art makes us Human

Oh how I love this bear!

I love art. I don't mean that I love every piece of art that has ever been produced, but that I love how art can evoke feelings, provoke discussions and teach things that wouldn’t be learnt in any other way.

Last week I heard a radio interview with a retired farmer who had finally fulfilled his dream of opening an art gallery in his old cow sheds. He financed this dream by selling off most of his land and I suppose it was deemed newsworthy because farmers are very much perceived as being down to earth and uncultured. You can read Stephen Dale’s fascinating story here. He was inspired by a visit to the Tate Gallery to view a controversial work by Carl André, commonly known as Bricks. I remember this work being dismissed as rubbish at the time - how can a pile of bricks be art? Nevertheless, at a time in his life when Stephen Dale needed inspiration, this work provided it and prompted a lifetime’s passion. Surely that makes it worthy of the label ‘art’.

I don't get it...it's Barbara Hepworth,
just appreciate its beauty!

When I was attempting to deliver the art curriculum to my SEN / ASD students, I would often show them examples of works by well known artists - Warhol, Kandinsky, Hepworth, Moore - and would defend them to some of my staff team who persisted in saying ‘I don’t get it’. I don’t suppose many of my pupils ‘got it’ either, but they were able to use the images as a springboard to be creative themselves, and some of the work they produced was amazing. Art can be about the process as well as the outcome, and both should be of equal value. 

My friend and I recently stumbled upon an exhibition of art work by people who attend Headway, a charity that supports individuals who have an acquired brain injury. They use art both as physical therapy and also as a means of expression. It was clear from the work on show that some people were more skilled than others, but it was the emotional content that was so compelling - collages of words that express how they felt about themselves; pictures of fragmented brains; isolated figures - the images helped me to understand  far more about the impact of a brain injury than a leaflet would have done. Art - I love it.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park - glorious!

I have to admit that art in the outdoors appeals to me most of all - Yorkshire Sculpture Park is spectacular and standing beneath the Angel of the North was breathtaking - so I was thrilled to happen upon an artwork at Runnymede near Windsor when we were travelling down to Cornwall last year. We stopped for some lunch and saw some chairs in the middle of a field. Wanting to stretch our legs we decided to investigate and discovered an amazing installation called ‘The Jurors’ by Hew Locke.

The Jurors, Runnymede

It was commissioned to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta and taught me more about the fight for human rights than I had learned in the previous sixty years! The jury system has its origins in the Magna Carta (new information!), and each of the twelve bronze chairs had images and symbols depicting struggles for freedom and equal rights. 

I learnt so much

We spent ages exploring each of the chairs, marvelling at the craftsmanship but also finding out more about human history in the process. I’m terrible - I never read the ‘blurb’ in museums - but I found things out almost by osmosis. Art…so powerful.

In these times of enforced public austerity, there is an understandable resistance to publicly funded art, and it's undoubtedly difficult to make the case for spending money on a sculpture when much of social housing is unfit for habitation. But there has to be more to life than just existing - responding to art work is part of being human.

A cry-drop...heartbreaking

While I was thinking about this post I remembered walking through the grounds of the cathedral in Bury St Edmunds with our granddaughter. We came across a sculpture that was a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust, and she said, ‘Look Nanny, a cry-drop’. She was four, unaware of the Holocaust, unable to read the accompanying plaque, but her response to the artwork - a cry-drop. She instinctively knew it was sad. Art - I love it.

Whether you get it or not, art makes us human

Vintage, pre-loved or just old?

Aah, vintage and retro...

When did second-hand shops become vintage emporia? Or bric-a-brac become kitsch and retro? Sometimes it seems to me that if you label something vintage or retro not only do you lend it an air of coolness that it wouldn’t otherwise have, you can also double it’s price on eBay!

You can't have too many sit on giraffes!

When I was growing up in the sixties, there was real pressure to buy everything new. If you couldn’t afford it, you used Hire Purchase to get the latest TV or sofa, and proudly showed it off to your neighbours. Admittedly many of us now use credit cards and buy now pay later schemes to furnish ourselves with the latest gizmos or home furnishings, but there has been a real shift, especially amongst millennials, to look back to simpler times and embrace vintage and retro in a way that lots of us blue rinsers never have.

My Mum loved a good jumble sale. Many of our clothes, as children, were second-hand and our toys ‘pre-loved’. We had a family tricycle that would be used by one sibling, then repainted to be presented to its next proud owner on their birthday. To be fair I don't think we ever realised, and we loved that trike. It had a boot and everything!

What's not to love?

I never really did embrace the second hand clothes though - especially when I proudly showed off my ‘new' shoes in the playground and said they'd come from a jumble sale. I endured jibes about being dirty and poor for weeks after that. I swore that, if I ever had children, they would always have brand spanking new clothes / toys / everything!

Oh, Beth loves kitsch catties!

How ironic is it, then, that my daughter loves nothing better than rummaging through a charity shop or car boot sale! She seems to have inherited many of my Mum’s genes, including cat collecting, gardening and the love of a bargain! For my Mum, with four young children to clothe and feed, secondhand clothes and toys were a necessity, but for Beth it is different. She loves the quirky things that appear in charity shops - she’s even been known to rescue items from charity shop bins, for goodness sake! She adores anything seventies, and has furnished and accessorised her home accordingly, with an eclectic mix of styles that just seem to work. If something isn't ‘cool’ it doesn't cross her threshold!

'I want everything in this window!'

When Beth comes home, her favourite place to visit is Vintage Mischief, in Beccles. Now, while I have been slightly disparaging about vintage shops, I can honestly say that this one is amazing. It has a real sense of style and some of the things it sells are design classics. 

Design classic candleholders - thank you
Vintage Mischief  (and hubby!)

However, whenever we visit, I do spend lots of my time saying, ‘We had one of those…Nanny had those cups…Brian’s Mum had that ornament.’ If only we’d realised - we could have flooded the market and made a mint! 

This was probably ours!

I was so excited when I saw a water container exactly the same as the one we had in the beach hut, and in that moment I was transported to a happy place, remembering glorious family times.

Such happy times!

So maybe that’s the point of vintage, retro, secondhand, pre-loved. Even if it doesn’t evoke personal memories, it gives you a sense of the past, imagining what an object’s life was like. Harking back to simpler times, where the World didn’t seem so scary (to be fair, it probably was, we just weren’t as connected to it) and summers were always sunny. Yet again, my daughter has got it just about right!

You can't have too many vintage gnomes, either!

Lost and Found...

So, one of our cats went missing. We were eating dinner on Tuesday evening when we realised that no one had seen him since Monday afternoon. Now Mo will quite often disappear for hours at a time, but not usually overnight, so we were puzzled and a bit concerned, but fully expected him to be there the following morning…but he wasn’t. 

We checked the shed, garage, spare rooms but no sign. Me, being me, decided he had drowned in a nearby dyke while trying to catch a frog. My husband thought he’d got into an open vehicle, his favourite thing to do, after catching frogs, and been driven off to goodness knows where. My son, on the other hand, was convinced that he’d crawled into one of the sewage pipes being laid nearby, and been sealed into a hideous fate! Suffice to say that we were all really unsettled by his absence. Every time the phone rang I expected it to be the vet saying a dead cat had been brought in and his microchip said it was ours - and sod’s law demands that we had more cold calls yesterday than in the past six weeks!

The power of the Book of Face!

By the afternoon I started to get really upset and posted a photo on Facebook, asking for help to find him. Then I started to cry and found it very difficult to stop. Every sad emoji that my friends posted started me off again until my eyes looked like peeled tomatoes. All of this over a cat. Okay, a very cute cat, but still a cat.

The thing that disturbed us the most was not knowing what had happened - was he lying dead somewhere or, worse injured and unable to get home? Was he locked in a garage that may not be opened for weeks? Had he been catnapped / shot / poisoned? Its amazing what your imagination can do to fill a void of uncertainty if you let it. All of us felt in limbo. Every time our other cat walked past the window we jumped and we were constantly expecting to see a black and white body under a hedge. My son felt sick, and even my appetite was unusually absent.

I'm home!

Then, at a little after 10pm, in he marched! Miaowing, demanding food and drink as if nothing has happened! He was very thirsty, and I suspect he’d been shut in somewhere but, other than that, he was fine. He ate some food, had a drink and went straight out again! Obviously not as traumatised as us!

Just before Mo walked in, we had been watching the news about the terrible Grenfell Tower fire in London. There were people being interviewed who were desperately searching for their families who lived in the tower block and hadn't heard from them all day. It put worrying about a cat into sharp perspective. Whole families were missing - brothers, sisters, parents, children. Horrible. Hopefully most of these people will be found safe and well in the various emergency centres, but undoubtedly some will have perished in the blaze. Again, terrible, but a definite, if tragic outcome. 

Every year in Britain there are thousands of people reported missing - over 130,000 in 2015-16. Whilst most of these people return home very quickly, 2% go missing for more than a week - that’s 2600 people! How do their families cope? Living with the dichotomy of hoping for the best and bracing themselves for the worst. I simply can’t imagine what that is like.

Real people, not just statistics...

Anybody who saw the recent Britain’s Got Talent can’t fail to have been moved by the Missing Person’s Choir - a group of people with missing family members, using a public forum to get their message out there in the hope of some new information. Seeing their photographs projected while the choir sung turned them from being statistic into being someone's child or parent.

I wrote recently about picking up the pieces of your life after the loss of a loved one (It's Okay to Laugh,too), but I am in awe of those people who have suffered a bereavement but not a death and yet carry on with their lives. I couldn't focus on anything yesterday, and it was just my cat that was missing. Enduring that feeling of uncertainty for any length of time over a family member or close friend is unimaginable. If you have time, check out the Missing People website, type in your area and have a look at the photos - maybe you have seen one of these people and could help reunite them with their family. How amazing it would be to help someone enjoy an 'I'm home' moment.

Only letting him out on a lead from now on!