Fair Warning

image from dreamstime.com

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter. 

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and run my stick along the public railings and make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat and eat three pounds of sausages at a go or only bread and pickles for a week and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes. 

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry and pay our rent and not swear in the street  and set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.  But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Do you know this poem by Jenny Joseph, English author and poet?  This is from another favorite book bought for me by my late husband.

It sits in pride of place with the other two similar books.  I have written about Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted  and have quoted from If I Had My life to Live Over.

So please don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.  My children have always thought that I would grow old disgracefully and this particular poem has haunted them since I first heard it.

I hope you enjoy it.