60.life

Ageless Beauty

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:19:28 GMT

A cheery chat with Trinny

Remember it? When Trinny Woodall burst onto our screens in the noughties, performing make-overs with Susannah Constantine. The show was called What Not to Wear and the pair won a Royal Television Society Award, marking its success. Trinny has also written numerous books, which have sold over three million copies worldwide. Her latest is called Fearless and I'm looking forward to putting some of her advice into action.

Never one to rest on her laurels – in fact, she rarely sits still – she's now an entrepreneur who has built her own beauty empire quick-smart - smart being the operative word. Her mission is to bring effortless beauty solutions to all ages. I caught up with her for a quick Q & A. No promo deals involved – I just love her products and her energy.

Q Trinny London is one of Europe’s fastest growing beauty businesses and you’ve built it all in a matter of six short years – it may have started on the kitchen table but now it’s based in bustling offices. Did your younger self ever imagine you’d be a seriously successful entrepreneur and businesswoman?

A No, I never imagined I would. But at different stages of my life, I've had an ambition to push myself. I've had that feeling ever since I left school. So it came down to how far I wanted to take that.

Q You have a gazillion followers on social media – your ‘Trinny Tribe’. What are the positives you try to bring to this community?

A To support one another. Not to be negative with each other. To lift other women who need lifting…we always think about that in our community. And we love to be able to focus on that. To get a sense of what is worrying the community and to talk about it. It might be about global events, or about how to express ourselves. Basically, we discuss things that affect how people are feeling.

Q I’m 61 (nearly 62) and while I say I still feel young, when I look back to when I was in my 30s, I felt very mature then – I’d gone through a lot of angst, including mental health issues and a divorce. It’s easy for me to look at a 30 year old now and just say, ‘Oh you’re so young,’ but I try to remember every age brings its own challenges, highs and lows. Your brand doesn't just appeal to the younger age groups. It's very age inclusive. Was that important to you and if so, why?

A Yes, when we launched Trinny London, it was a conscious decision and fundamentally, we're still a brand for 35-plus women because they are one of the most marginalised in the marketplace and the least addressed. And as you move into older age groups, there's even less inclusivity. So for us, it's very important to champion those consumers. But equally, we want to appeal to anyone who's reached a stage where they feel ‘I'm a grown up’ and by that, I mean, ‘I want to make informed decisions now. I don't want to buy into fads’. We're not about fads, we're about thought-through decisions.

Q How long can it take to create a product from idea to launch?

A It can take four years. With skincare, you’ve got so much testing to do in the lab. We work from scratch, starting with the raw ingredients, building our formulation, checking that all those ingredients work safely and well together. Then we have to scale it up in terms of volume and do compatibility testing. Once we've done that, we have to test it on people for a certain period of time - if it's a serum, for example, we’ll do clinical trials. Finally we're ready to go to market. It’s a long process.

Q I’m very serious about sun protection and I wore your See The Light every day when I received it. It was a great launch and afterwards, you travelled around in an open top London bus decorated with your brand colours and images of your good self. How did that feel?

A It felt like a celebration of what we do. When you are mainly an online brand and people see you in the physical world, for example, in that bus, it creates excitement. We took the bus all over London and people stopped in the street. It made them smile and that's what we wanted the tour to do.

Image by

Q I’m bowled over by your energy. How do you pace yourself?

A I always start the day with physical movement and eating something nourishing. If I start the day without movement - and with sugar - I'm not gonna have a great day full of energy. In my twenties, I would wake up and just be recharged with natural energy. But I think as you travel the path of life, you realise your body needs different things at different stages. Now, every day, I have to include some form of exercise. And I need to eat well and take good supplementation.

Q What’s your favourite piece of life advice?

A That generally, everything you worry about doesn’t happen.

Jan says: note to self!

Q What’s the worst fashion or beauty mistake you ever made?

A Wearing orange fake tan. For about six years.

Q As you don’t hide your age, I know you will be 60 next year. How will you celebrate?

A I'll probably go with, like, 12 friends on an adventure where we've never been before.

You can get more… satisfaction

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 09:14:37 GMT

If you try, if you try, if try, if you try

Last week, Sir Mick Jagger turned 80. He looked slay* in his bottle green suit, silk polka dot shirt and grey trainers. His footwear was not only a stylish choice (love smart with casual) but appropriate given in any one of his stage performances, he dances the equivalent of eight to 12 miles. Impressive, not simply in light of his years but because pro-footballers, on average, only run six during a match.

I met Mick 20-odd years ago at the BAFTAs’ after-party at the Café Royal. It was a time when phone signals could be elusive - as I walked to a balcony, waving my mobile about to no avail, I noticed a slim guy next to me had just come off a call. Gently (cheekily) I elbowed him, saying, ‘How come you got so lucky?’.

It was only as he turned towards me that I realised who he was. At that moment, I decided it would be more embarrassing to scream, ‘Ooh, it’s you,’ so I just carried on chatting, as did he. After a while, he said he had to remember where he was sitting, so we both peered over the balcony to the level below to pinpoint his fellow guests. My friends couldn’t believe their eyes. ‘Yeah, me and Mick go back a long way,’ I announced. (All of five minutes).

Ironically, a young Jagger once stated, ‘I’d rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when I’m 45.’ Now, I guess he’d rather be singing Satisfaction at 85 than be dead. He also said he was going to quit when he hit 33. I’m glad he didn’t.

However, 33 happens to be an interesting choice of age to draw a line in the sand because it was long thought this was when our personalities become pretty much fixed. That we’re all grown up and we are who we are. That leopards don’t change their silk polka dots.

But research by René Mõttus, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, shows on the contrary, during our lives our personalities are malleable and fluid. So much so, by the time we reach our 70s and 80s, they’ve undergone significant transformation. In fact, it turns out you can actively train-in some changes if you try… and you try…you get the picture.

Instead of couching ageing in terms of it’s-all-downhill-from-here, ‘personality maturation’ as it’s called, can have some wonderful advantages. For instance, studies show as we age, we have a tendency to become more altruistic, more conscientious and less neurotic, as well as developing a better sense of humour - the idea that older people are universally grumps-ville is a stereotype that needs rethinking.

As Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert said in his TED talk on personality, ‘Human beings are works in progress who mistakenly think they’re finished…Hint: that’s not the case.’

I think I've made some headway (even though I'm as super-anxious as I always was). For instance, when I was young I was painfully shy. Now, I’m something of a show-off, especially on the dance floor. I also think I’m slowly becoming more optimistic. For instance, when I consider the benefits of ageing, here's ten straight off:

1 FOMO becomes JOMO (joy of missing out). Perhaps you prefer being at home with a G&T watching Gogglebox than at an industry awards in a ballroom full of sequinned frocks. And that’s ok.

2 If a scammer rings and says he has all your passwords, you can reply, ‘Thank goodness for that, what are they?’.

3 …although when Magic plays Bohemian Rhapsody , you can remember every single word.

4 In a hijack situation, you’ll probably be released first.

5 When you announce you’d love to get hold of some good grass, eavesdroppers assume you’re talking about your lawn.

6 Finally, people start to take your hypochondria seriously.

7 You can admit you’re having Botox, not to banish laughter lines, but to soften your WTF lines, which are way, way deeper.

8 While you’re only young once, there’s no rule to say you can’t be immature for the rest of your life.

9 Given people tend to have such limited expectations of age, if you learn to do something a bit out-there, like the splits or lindy hop, you will blow people’s minds.

10 You can now understand what David Bowie meant when he said, ‘Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.’ Ch ch ch ch changes indeed.

*slay can now mean amazing/cool/great/fashionable…apparently.

Warning

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:09:22 GMT

The following may be triggering

Youth and old age. I’ll say that again. Youth and old age. Are you upset by those terms? Has hearing them reduced you to a quivering wreck in need of a safe space, a cup of sweet tea and a Jammie Dodger?

Well, according to a recent report in The Telegraph , the University of Exeter has drawn up a list of 34 topics of a ‘sensitive’ nature that may require an advance ‘content notice’. And youth and old age have joined other potentially triggering subjects, such as political belief, sex and unemployment.

Deary me. Call me old-fashioned (I won’t be offended) but I thought the point of university was to build up your intellectual muscle by exploring a breadth of concepts with an open mind. To sharpen your intellect on the anvil of knowledge and expect a few sparks to fly in the heat of debate. Not hide in the stationery cupboard at the drop of a hat. (I know, I know, silly thing to say - they don’t have stationery cupboards anymore.)

Content notices in the arts have also been making headlines in the last few days. The latest hails from the folks running the Chichester Festival Theatre. In a bid to guide those patrons wondering whether the Sound of Music was for them, instead of issuing a warning that you’ll have to sit through a fair few schmaltzy old numbers before you get your mitts on an interval G&T, it flags up the musical includes a distressing theme, namely the threat from Nazi Germany.

Surely, if you’re booking for the Sound of Music , you’re aware of the Von Trapp story. And if it turns out you weren’t or couldn’t cope, it begs the question would the Chichester Festival Theatre feel comfortable encouraging you to sing ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens’ on the basis that then you won’t feel so bad?

The artistic and literary hills are alive with the sound of trigger warnings. It’s just been announced that Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse will now carry the disclaimer that the work ‘reflects attitudes of its time’. You don’t say. In that case – and in the name of balance - should Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four bear a warning that the work includes dystopian visions that might well be considered prescient?

TV’s at it too. Recently, I was watching a re-run of Downton Abbey and there was an onscreen message warning of, among other things, scenes of alcohol use. What, pray, were we talking? A couple of pre-dinner sherries in the drawing room before someone dropped a napkin in the Vichyssoise.

The problem with all of this hyper-vigilance re upset and offence is that now we’ve started down this road, where will it end? If you take the argument to its logical (yet inevitably batty) conclusion, every single book, film, painting, song, building, sport, dance, invention, product, foodstuff, could possess some element that could be traced to something that could pose a problem for someone.

I mean what about the fact I’m triggered by the idiocy of some trigger warnings - shouldn’t it follow that such trigger warnings be preceded by a trigger warning? Then again, on a serious note, some mental health professionals have raised concern that the word ‘triggered’ is now applied so widely and lightly, it undermines the real meaning it has for people who live with mental health issues such as PTSD and panic attacks - who experience very real suffering when they are triggered. Something for those penning trigger-happy warnings to ponder.

Another thought. Do those judging the past purely by present-day standards not realise the same might happen to them? After all, what will future generations make of the world we’ve constructed today? For all we know, they might conclude there were incontrovertible signs we were losing our collective mind, then slap a trigger warning on us.

Because the way we’re heading, the only book you’ll be able to write is a very short but sweet eleven word story: ‘Once upon a time, everyone lived happily ever after. The end’. The trouble with that, apart from its obvious lack of a story arc, is that humans don’t live happily all the time. We all make mistakes, endure sadness, encounter problems, hold grievances and live though tragedies, as well as celebrate positivity, fun and success.

What the education system might consider is that helping students to develop resilience, rather than shielding them from reality, might prove more useful in the long run. That adhering to historical accuracy is the best way to understand the past and improve the future. And that one of the true values of art is that it allows us to inhabit a life experience other than our own, albeit temporarily and in our imagination. To that end, a darkened theatre is perhaps the ultimate safe space. A chance to venture beyond the doe-ray-me!-me!-me! space.

If we continue to wrap ourselves up in more and more layers of cultural cottonwool, the risk is instead of creating a world of greater safety, we simply end up living in fear of the thought police. And we know that never ends well. We have been warned.

Just to be clear

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:58:38 GMT

A lexicon of not saying what you mean

All pictures courtesy of Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Plain talking. Good grief, there’s precious little of that about these days. In politics. In the office. Even in some of the everyday phrases we use that often belie an alternate meaning. I always cringe when someone says a situation is “challenging”. In my experience what they mean is, “It’s an effing nightmare and we have no choice but to get on with it.”

So here, in a bit of a departure from my usual posts, I list 33 phrases we use in modern life…and suggest some possible translations, all in the spirit of making you smile.

It's a soft launch

We’re not ready so the service is likely to be shit.

We’re experiencing a high volume of calls

We’re in the toilets, vaping.

It is what it is

I’m trying to convince myself I’ve accepted the situation but I haven’t, so expect more moaning.

I like what you’ve done to your hair

What have you done to your hair?

I might join you later

I’m going straight home.

With the best will in the world

I have absolutely no intention of helping you out.

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

There. I’ve already forgotten I failed to help you with your first problem.

I want to make a few tweaks

You’re going to have to redo the whole thing.

That’s not bad

That’s actually surprisingly good.

That’s quite good

That’s actually pretty bad.

A friendly reminder

Why didn’t you reply the first time?

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause

By ‘inconvenience’, we mean you’ll miss your transatlantic flight.

Oh, such a shame you have to cancel

Thank God, now I can watch Happy Valley.

I should start making a move

I can’t wait to go home.

You look summery

That outfit doesn't leave much to the imagination.

You’ve lost a lot of weight

I hate you.

This is my truth

Basically, I’m lying.

We’re breaking down the silos

Let’s do some blue-sky thinking

Let’s talk total bollocks until the meeting ends.

We’ll be breaking down the silos

Oh God, we’re going to have to work more closely with the marketing team.

I don’t mean to be rude

I’m about to be rude.

With all due respect

I'm going to say exactly what I think and I don’t give a cobblers.

Let’s take this offline

Christ, don’t mention that in front of Sean from accounts.

Let’s agree to disagree

You’re clearly an idiot.

The new boss is a real disruptor

He’ll change everything on day one and when he inevitably leaves, those who’ve clung onto their jobs can change things back to how they were.

Going forwards

Don’t cock it up again.

You’re too sensitive

You’re perceptive and I’m losing the argument.

A game-changer

Some minor idea that will have next-to-zero impact in the scheme of things. (Meghan Markle once said that a perfectly cooked chicken was a ‘game-changer’ and when you take one to a dinner party, you win friends and influence people…I rest my case.)

Who knew?

I didn’t know but let’s assume you didn’t either so I feel better about the fact I didn’t know.

You’re too sensitive

Honestly, it doesn’t matter

It will take me ages to get over this.

Whenever you get a minute

Now

We must get together

We won’t, I’m just being polite (but let’s repeat this every Christmas).

Let’s park that for now

I’ve filed it in the bin.

I’ve passed this onto our team

You’ll be lucky to hear from us again.

Kick The Bucket

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 17:32:37 GMT

When it comes to travel, I prefer the just-see over the must-see

Image by Jan Masters

The boundless sands of Bondi Beach. The mysterious, mildly amused Mona Lisa. Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Just some of the bucket list, drumroll experiences that make travel worthwhile. Except…except having tucked a fair bit of journeying under my belt, I no longer pin holiday hopes on pivotal tourist attractions.

Don’t get me wrong, most have an intrinsic beauty or legit wow-factor that has preceded and promoted their fame. And there’s no doubt chalking up that visit can be worthwhile. For instance, I have a soft spot for Venice, even though I once broke up with a boyfriend by a canal (to make up for it, years later, I got engaged at the Cipriani, gazing out at St Mark’s Square…what made that more memorable was Marilyn Manson sitting at the next table).

Hot-spots can be less than riveting

Image by Jan Masters

That said, there’s always the chance tourist meccas can turn out to be a bit, well, meh. For a start, there are variables that can deflate the inner tube of hopefulness; huge crowds, shit weather, piles of litter or an ill-timed row with your nearest and dearest. But the greatest risk is these hallowed sites will crumble under the sheer weight of expectation, paling under the glare of a million filtered photos.

Even as a teen, the Eiffel Tower failed to wow me on our family’s first ‘foreign holiday’. I can’t even recall the ascent. I do, however, remember with crystal clarity the spectacular row my dad had with the sniffy woman in the kiosk.

He was trying to help by stacking an abundance of currency in neat, easy-to-count rows but she simply made a sour face, threw her hands in the air and shouted, ‘Oh là là!’ at him. Bad move. I’m afraid he retorted, ‘I’ll give you “oh là là”,’ and muddled up the coinage so she had to start from scratch. Voilà. That’s my abiding memory of the Eiffel Tower.

‘The holy encounter had a great impact on me’

Then there’s the Taj Mahal. While I found the edifice unquestionably impressive, the scale of selfie-taking visitors was almost as jaw-dropping (in 2018, the number of entries was capped at a mere 40,000 a day!).

Yet after we’d ticked the Taj and were en route to Jodphur, we hiked a remote mountain and not only came across a colossal white marble elephant but also a holy man wringing out his washing in the doorway of a sun-bleached hut.

As we wondered at his life, surely spent mostly alone in contemplation, he bestowed on our foreheads a bindi in marigold orange. The encounter had a great impact on me. More so because later, on our way to the nearest town, he overtook our cab riding pillion on a speeding motorbike, giving us a toothy grin and hearty wave.

Life in the fast lane

Image by Jan Masters

The true value of travel, I believe, is what you see, feel and discover as you journey beyond the brochure. Other people’s everyday doings and dealings. The funny things that happen on the way to the forum, as it were.

In Buenos Aires, we skipped the tourist tango gala for a local, late-night milonga and I danced with an elderly guy who knew a man who knew a girl who’d danced with the Prince of Wales…something like that.

While in Laos, when Paul and I were on honeymoon and thought we’d signed up for a small, swift blessing following our registry office ceremony in the King’s Road, the village had other ideas, setting up a traditional wedding. It started in someone’s front room, complete with a shrine next to the TV, and ended in a dance party under fluorescent lights in a massive car port.

Paul and I getting hitched (again) .

Image by someone in a front room in Laos

But the moment I really learned to stop engineering bucket-list moments was after trying to photograph cherry blossom in Japan. Before I booked my flight, I studied the online ‘blossom alerts’ obsessively. All were saying I’d pitched it just right. However, the day I arrived, the heavens opened, halting flowers in bud and knocking petals off those already unfurled. Poetic in a way because cherry blossom symbolises the ephemeral beauty of life.

It was then I realised I love Japan any time of year, come rain, sun, snow, hail, heat. I love the atmosphere. The artistry of details. The way old traditions dovetail with the new and the downright nutty. I don’t love it for a classic pic of blossom in front of Mount Fuji. I also learned to appreciate my own backyard more because when I got home, the trees in local streets were covered in crazy, cumulus clouds of the pink stuff.

Final thought; after lockdown, I said to a friend that in the last three months of 2019, I’d been to Mongolia, Japan and Antarctica, while in the whole of 2020 and 21, I’d only managed Chorley Wood. She replied, ‘Yes, but to an Antarctic penguin, Chorley Wood would be the trip of a lifetime’. There’s something in that too.

Stand-up and be counted

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Mon, 29 May 2023 17:04:26 GMT

The night I went out-out on my own-own

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Recently, I treated myself to a ticket to see my favourite comedian, Micky Flanagan, at the O2. Aisle seat. Second row. Right up the front. Bosh. Like me, Micky turned 60 last year and I’ve always loved his laser observations, delivered in that trademark cockney patter. I often tune into his wit and wisdom while travelling, especially when I need to hear a happy-making voice from home. Case in point; he helped me forget my nerves on a bumpy overnight flight from Moscow to Mongolia. Cheers Micky.

My husband was well up for coming with…but his filming dates were pushed and he couldn’t make it, so I decided to go on my tod. It had been a long time since I’d gone to a show alone, something I used to do much more in my 40s. Providing you make plans to get home safely, there can be something special in picking yourself up, sitting yourself down and engaging with an act in a way that perhaps you wouldn’t if you were socialising with others.

I think that’s why I was often singled out; Harry Hill invited me on stage for a game of Swingball, accompanied by the Wimbledon theme tune, and at a Nigel Kennedy concert, the maestro pointed my way and announced he was going to play a Vivaldi concerto just for moi. In fact, going solo to the ballet at the Royal Opera House was how I met my husband.

I went out on my own-own

Image by Wgbieber from Pixabay

However, the run-up to Flanagan fun filled me with tech stress. First, I had to download the O2 app so I could upload my ticket’s QR code. This I had to show on arrival in order to obtain a paper ticket, at which point my phone would be locked in a pouch, only to be unlocked at the end of the evening along with 20,000 others. Hell’s-Bow-bells, when did entertainment become so complicated?

It didn’t help that anxiety and depression had got the better of me for the previous two months and I’d become rather hermity. Suddenly, I felt like a bunny in the spotlights. Daunted. Awkward. So much so that when I was making my way down the arena stairs, G&T in one hand, phone pouch in the other, I missed my footing and nearly fell, saving myself by jumping in the air and galloping down three more steps, drink splashing everywhere like a vintage bottle of Old Spice. Still, I raised the first laugh of the evening.

‘Being sans phone was enjoyable’

An hour before curtain-up, with no phone to call my friend, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Until I started looking around, enjoying the music and realised being sans phone was kind of enjoyable. No selfies. No scrolling. Like cutting the digital umbilical cord. By the time the crowd was singing Sweet Caroline , good times never felt so good.

Micky was magic. He covered cancel culture, musicals, covid, crying, care homes and even ageism…the last ‘ism people can still get away with. Then he said how having a fall was often the first sign of an oldie’s decline (blimey, I’d nearly had that fall at his gig). And while he wasn’t savagely confrontational about wokery, he wasn’t afraid of it either.

I nearly had a fall at the gig

Image by Azmi Talib from Pixabay

This was refreshing in a week that had seen the Cambridge Footlights offer young comedians a ‘sensitivity reading service’ to check that their comedy was ‘punching up’ (the idea that those with political, social or economic clout are legit targets) rather than ‘punching down’ (aiming at the less fortunate or powerful). I suppose on that basis, we shouldn’t have laughed at Father Dougal – only Bishop Brennan being kicked up the arse.

Micky, thank the Lord, doesn’t get bogged down in whether he’s punching up. He just gets on with it, even boxing his own ears and s ometimes, landing one on the audience – and we positively roar with the punches. Because well-delivered comedy has the ability to make us laugh, not just at each other, but ourselves. Ultimately, it can help us all rub along without getting in a lather. As 20,000 of us left the venue smiling, with phones unlocked in seconds (fair do’s, the O2 was running like a well-oiled machine) I felt my insides had had a jolly good shake.

A final thought; when I was younger and feeling sad, I would sometimes go to ground in my flat. My mum was always relieved when I made the effort to emerge. On one occasion, I was being dragged to the theatre. Cheerily, she asked which play we were going to see. When I announced it was Fear and Misery of the Third Reich , she replied, “Well, it gets you out”.

Likewise, when I had to pull myself together for a business trip and added it was to interview Cameron Diaz in LA for the cover of ELLE, in all seriousness she repeated, “Well, it gets you out”. I’m guessing that last week, had I told her I was going to the O2 on my Jack Jones, she’d have said the same. Except in this case, it was getting me out-out.

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 11:35:31 GMT

A scoop from the skies for 60.life

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

The majority of Americans (57 per cent) now thinks aliens definitely or probably exist. That’s according to a survey end of last year by YouGov America, with 34 per cent believing UFOs are likely to be connected with extra-terrestrial activity, up from the 20 per cent who thought the same in 1996. With news that UFOs were shot down over the US this February, that figure may well have risen.

Incredibly, during the hubbub, 60.life was offered an exclusive interview with ‘The WISE’, a confederation from a galaxy far, far away…well, far away for us, but for them, relatively do-able over a weekend, unless it’s a bank holiday when random lanes on the super-wormholes tend to be coned off.

Wormholes are often coned off during bank holidays

Image by Martin Str from Pixabay

They appeared as bursts of darting radiance, a bit like the Northern Lights but not so green and spoke in an unknown language that amazingly, I could hear simultaneously in English. Opening on a fairly formal note and uncannily echoing The Carpenters, they announced, ‘We’ve been observing your Earth, and we’d like to make… a contact with you.’ Loosening up a bit, they added rainy days and Mondays also got them down.

It was immediately apparent their intelligence is far superior to ours, yet at the same time, they are considerably more humble. They explained this sense of balance has underpinned their evolution. It is imperative, they affirm, that you always match technical and creative advances with equal measures of humility and discipline. Otherwise, the immense progress you generate inevitably outstrips your ability to deal with it. Then you just piss it all away over a cliff.

They seem sensitive souls, recounting their sadness at first seeing the Cadbury’s Smash ads of the 1970s because they would never in a million light years have laughed at us for making mashed potato the slow way. It is for this reason The WISE now serve proper mashed potato as a delicacy at major celebrations and conventions.

My first question, which granted wasn’t very incisive, was this: ‘Why not go to the national press rather than the blog of a mature woman typing in her back bedroom, who finds a lot about modern life not only wearing but frankly ridiculous?'

Even The Wise find parking a headache

Image by Martin Str from Pixabay

Their reply was that they didn’t want to give their first terrestrial interview to a news outlet that might sensationalise the headline, encouraging readers to skip straight to the comments clutching their metaphorical popcorn. They feared that if their explanations about their first official visit to Earth weren’t heard in full, there was every possibility they’d get cancelled.

They were at pains to say while they understood this modern cultural expression of moral outrage often springs from the pursuit of justice and/or a place of kindness, when meted out in the court of social media, risks closing down discussion and denies opportunities for humans to admit mistakes - perhaps even be forgiven - in order to forge further growth.

‘Cancel culture has created a climate of fear’

Ironically, it has created such a climate of fear, those who wouldn’t dream of knowingly offending anyone have retreated into the relative safety of innocuous parlance. At the very most, all the mild-mannered dare do is whisper ( with a few Father Dougal sideways glances ) that the world has become a wee bit unfathomable, before shaking their heads, sighing deeply and heading to Waitrose.

My next question: ‘Why make yourselves known to us now?’ The answer was unsettling. They think humanity has never been in such a precarious position. Conflicts are rife. Warheads are primed. And strangely, many democracies appear surprisingly invested in the pursuit of compliance and control.

AI is real

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The WISE also think tech is rewiring our brains, which is why we’ve become so crap at concentrating, yet we’ve imparted ‘deep learning’ to AI. ‘Have we really thought this through?’ they asked. ‘Has the course upon which we are set been democratically agreed?’. In short, have we evaluated the existential threat?

There was another factor as to why they decided to appear to us at this moment in time. Had they left their visit a month longer, they reasoned, the whole hoopla of whether Meghan would make it to the coronation, perhaps wearing a flying saucer on her head, would inevitably knock them off the front pages, which after seven million years of pondering when to reveal themselves to the human race, would be unbecoming. They might even end up on South Park, a prospect that would crush them after the Cadbury’s debacle re reconstituted potato.

There are many facets of our human lives that perplex them. That we can compose sublime music and great literature yet seem hellbent on producing light entertainment shows where people pick dates on the basis of others' genitals. That we say we want technology to free up our time, yet spend most of our earth hours staring at it.

We beat our eco chests pursuing net zero, yet are so enslaved to consumerism, we seem oblivious to the thousands of container ships circling the globe, stuffed with tat that once warehoused can be delivered to our front doors the next day - if we order in 1 hour, 24 minutes…1 hour, 23 minutes…1 hour, 22 minutes. We dutifully rinse our yogurt pots for recycling yet buy a new dishwasher because it’s cheaper to replace than fix. We bang on about the value of being our true selves, yet appear narcissistically addicted to altering our faces and applying filters to photos, calibrated for homogeneity.

These enigmas are something The WISE will ponder before reverting back to 60.life. All they asked of me when I wrote this up was to avoid saying the aliens had ‘reached out’, a phrase that makes them queasy, much like ‘in sooth’ did during the Middle Ages. They also loathe the phrase someone is ‘smashing it’ because it sounds so uncouth. But in sooth, their aversion might well be connected with a certain ‘70s TV ad. Who knows? We’ve only just begun.

Brimful of Beauty

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 11:25:26 GMT

Tips to make you bloom and blush

It’s been six months since I took my place at the dressing table as the Telegraph Magazine’s resident beauty columnist. I think they picked me because I’ve been in the beauty industry on and off since Natalie Imbruglia was Torn (a song that played on a loop when I co-hosted the Beauty & Hair stage at the Cosmo Show, Olympia, with makeup artist Daniel Sandler and hairdresser Nicky Clarke). Also, I bring something new to the party because I’m old, and there aren’t many old beauty editors. Brimful of Asha. Brilliant. Also on the Olympia loop.

So here’s five tips I’ve picked up lately and some of my current fave products at the moment (prices quoted are correct at the time of publication, usually from the brands’ websites, but shop around as you can often find great deals).

Bloomeffects Tulip Tint and Studio 10 Glowplexion

The Chic of It

Oh man, I’ve rediscovered blusher. Not sure why I jettisoned it for years because it’s the reason everyone is now telling me I look well - although I did a Zoom the other day in a rollneck sweater when the heating was on and I looked really hot (in the temperature sense of the word) so lesson learned…stay subtle.

While we often think of gels, creams and liquids as twenty-something options, in truth, these formulations are much more forgiving and subtle for older complexions than powder, which can sit in fine lines and makes skin look parched.

Back in the day, I was always told to apply blusher to the apple of my cheeks – the part that looks cushiony when you smile. While this may be sensational on the young, when you’re older, unless you maintain a manic grin, this ‘apple’ can drop, so you end up with blusher that’s too low, dragging your whole look down. Much better to target your cheek bones, which will help everything appear lifted. Some experts offer advice on how to locate your cheek bones but dear God, it’s the bit that feels like your cheek bones.

My absolute favourite blushers right now are Bloomeffects Tulip Tint (£27, fenwick.co.uk) and Studio 10 Plumping Blush Glow-plexion (£26, studio10beauty.com) - this really wakes up your face (super-popular and on pre-order now).

Ren’s Ready Steady Glow and Gatineau’s Exfoliating PHA+BHA Glow Tonique

Scrub That

The woman on the ‘80s TV ad first showed me how it was done. Exfoliation. First – and this was clearly important - her hair was in a bridal up-do. Sporting full makeup, she washed her cheeks with the scrub, which appeared to have bits of Clacton Beach in it, then she rinsed. Kind of. But not really. And voilá, with full makeup still intact, her skin was smooth and clean.

Exfoliation is nothing like that now. It’s a multi-faceted and infinitely more finessed affair. Falling into two main categories – mechanical and chemical - the former refers to a physical buffing action, while the latter relates to ingredients such as alpha and beta hydroxy acids (AHAs and BHAs) that loosen the bonds between dead skin cells and the skin’s surface.

I’ve been using two (not at the same time, obvs); Ren’s Ready Steady Glow Daily AHA Tonic (£28, renskincare.com) which contains lactic acid, willow bark extract and azelaic precursors and Gatineau’s Exfoliating PHA+BHA Glow Tonique, (£34, gatineau.com). If I’ve whisked one of these over my face the night before I get up early to hand my pup, Eadie Rockets, to my twice-a-week doggie day care lady, she always notices my skin looks good (the doggie day care lady, not Eadie).

One rule remains; go easy, monitoring how your skin reacts. The epidermis is there for a protective reason and can have too much of a good thing, so don’t overdo it and do use sunscreen. Oh, and don’t bother with a bridal up-do as it rarely influences exfoliation outcome.

Jonathan Ross and me, co-presenting a beauty awards ceremony in the 90s – we should have been a shoo-in for Strictly .

Loss adjustments

When I was young, I used to be able to sit on my hair. Now, the only way I could do that is if I were to collect what’s left in my brush and stuff a cushion with it. While I don’t suffer from hair loss, it’s definitely shorter and thinner. Why? I consulted my mane man, Glenn Lyons, the clinical director of the Philip Kingsley Trichological Clinic, London.

“When you’re talking about natural ageing rather than specific problems with hair loss, although there are exceptions, two factors usually come into play,” he explains. “One is that the anagen – or growing – phase tends to shorten as you age, so hair doesn’t have the chance to grow as long as it used to (this is why hair may feel thinner throughout the length). The second is that the diameter of each follicle decreases, which means the hair shaft itself isn’t as thick.”

Lyons suggests you start by brushing up your understanding of, well, brushing. Anything with dense bristles, where each tuft is arranged in varying lengths, can cause hair to stretch as it’s pulled over them – this tugging exerts unnecessary stress.

“While I totally appreciate these kind of brushes are useful when you’re heat styling, when you’re simply brushing your hair, look for those with single prongs. That way, the hair is able to sink to the cushion of the brush and glide through more easily.” My top choices are the Philip Kingsley Vented Paddle Brush (£25, philipkingsley.co.uk) and Aveda Wooden Paddle Brush (£26, aveda.co.uk).

Philip Kingsley Vented Paddle Brush and Aveda Wooden Paddle Brush

Time for a sandwich

That would be a ‘moisture sandwich’. It’s a trend that’s big on TikTok (no, me neither) and it refers to layering skincare applications with something watery to trap moisture next to the skin and help products penetrate more efficiently. Enter the magic of mists. After cleansing or between a serum and moisturiser, use a facial mist such as one of those from Thayers (£10.49, lookfantasic.com) that are alcohol-free and contain witch hazel and aloe vera. In unscented, as well as rose petal, cucumber and lavender, you can also use over makeup.

My real fave hails from Norway - Marina Miracle’s Flower Berry Essence (£30, marinamiracle.co.uk). It contains hyaluronic acid, a probiotic ferment to support skin’s barrier and cucumber, elderflower, raspberry and strawberry to calm and comfort. The mist is so fine, it’s like being on top of a mountain in the clouds.

How now, the brow

I’ve never forgotten a tip I picked up backstage at a Chanel runway show in Paris over a decade ago. Peter Philips, the then creative director of make-up (now at Dior) told me an instant anti-ageing trick was to make my eyebrows thicker, not thinner. In our youth, brows are naturally fuller, becoming sparser and losing colour as we get older. Ever since, I’ve foresworn over-plucking, filling them out instead.

Using either a soft pencil or a powder eyeshadow with a stiff angled brush, begin at the inner section, which tends to be the most sparse or asymmetric (hold a pencil vertically at the outer edge your nose – ideally, where it meets the brow line is where the brow should start). When working on this area, lightly fill in, bottom to top, mimicking hair growth. Use a spoolie brush (like a clean mascara wand) to blend.

Next, work along the bottom edge to the middle of the brow and then flick strokes upwards before softly defining the top edge, filling in the natural shape of the brow. Blend again.

Move to the tail, filling and finessing with small subtle strokes. You can extend the tail slightly - to find the perfect finishing point, angle a pencil from the outside of the nostril to the end of your eye. Just never make the tail dip lower than the inner corner. Highbrow beauty, achieved.

Blue is the Colour

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 14:26:36 GMT

But let’s hear it for Cheery Tuesday

Dolly at the 2016 Country Music Awards, Vegas. vecteezy.com/free-photos

Blue Monday – deemed the third Monday of January - is now a thing. As is using the phrase ‘a thing’. The concept was originally coined in a 2005 press release from a travel company and it was based on a pseudoscientific ‘equation’ that plotted the potential for peak collective despondency.

It took into account factors such as the time elapsed since Christmas (clue: feels like months), the fact the weather is shite, debt is high and, if resolutions have already been broken, motivation is low. Yet it also acknowledged a concomitant feeling of the need to take action… presumably revolving around booking a holiday.

There’s no doubt January can be a drab month. I hate dark afternoons. I leave my tax return until the last minute. And yes, I experience a self-imposed expectation I should sort my life out. This is always a downer because clearly if I’d managed to accomplish that last year, I’d now be revelling in my success instead of sadly hoovering up chocolates with centres that didn’t appeal to anyone over the festive season when the ambassador was really spoiling us. At this point, I’m adrift on a sea of sugar-soaked self-loathing.

Gone are the days the ambassador was really spoiling us

However, my friend came up with a great antidote to making resolutions. She asked me to list five things I’d like to do in the coming year that would bring me joy. Not things I want to achieve. Or are sensible. Or courageous. Just stuff to do for the sheer heaven of it. A quintet of quintessential bursts of happiness.

This is a pertinent idea because somewhere along the line, us modern humans have decided that happiness should be a state of mind inextricably linked to a degree of permanence. But given the imperfection of life, this demand is a) mad and b) destined to fail.

‘This demand is clearly mad’

Too often, we find ourselves trying to pin down the butterfly of happiness. To ensnare it. To label it. To put it in a frame for all to see, a strategy that forgets happiness is fluttering, fleeting and rarely cooperates if pursued with a net and a bottle of chloroform. Such dogged determination to experience unfaltering delight is akin to putting happiness in a killing jar. For it is an emotion more likely to manifest when you welcome in air and space and let things go.

To be clear, I’m not talking about living in the moment. Because personally, this isn't a commitment I can make. ‘Live in the moment’, we’re told. ‘All that exists is the now.’ Oh for pity’s sake, we’re not goldfish (in fact, to set the record straight, even goldfish have memories that last months, even years, according to an expert in fish cognition at Macquarie University, Australia).

Even goldfish have memories

As humans, ‘the now’ continually pivots around the past and the future. We remember what we’ve been through. And we plan ahead, particularly key if you want to see ABBA Voyage or Micky Flanagan live. Or book a non-emergency GP appointment this side of March.

A more realistic idea to bring balance to Blue Monday - and all the other blue days of the week that might (will) arise during the year - is to give ourselves permission to stop judging the status of whatever brings us bliss. Sure, it might be something grand or sensational, but equally, it could be simple or silly.

For instance, when I look back at moments of unbridled enjoyment, some are once-in-a-lifetime events such as seeing polar bears in the Arctic, although another one is clearing out my cutlery draw while watching Bargain Hunt . Sure, the polar bear spotting will garner me social (and social media) cred. But if de-staining my teaspoons gives me the jollies, who cares?

Wall of sound

Which is how last week, I came to be singing Dolly Parton's Jolene in a choir because learning to sing is one of my nominated five-a-year jumps for joy. Cue signing up to Rock Choir as a soprano and performing fun twiddly bits when ever the altos carry the melody. Tears came into my eyes, partly because the pleasure seemed so pure at heart, but also because it reminded me of my teenage past.

Suddenly, I was back in my old bedroom circa 1975, hearing Jolene on a scratchy radio. At that time, I had flaming locks of auburn hair and ivory skin, which sun cream ads – and most of the 3rd year at school – were in full agreement was the crappiest of all physical combinations. And yet here was Dolly, belting out that not only were these features attractive, she was positively scared of their power. Gosh, I went to sleep happy that night. A nd at 60, here I was, merrily singing the same country anthem all the way home.

So on that note, I wish you many Cheery Tuesdays. Now I must dash...those boring chocolates won’t eat themselves.

60.life on BBC Radio 4

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 17:28:25 GMT

Listen again.

Photo credit: BBC Sounds

Audio

I still haven’t written my Christmas cards yet. In fact, I’m waiting for them to be printed. What with the news of the strikes, at this rate, they probably won’t arrive until February! But I do like an old-school card. And it was on this topic that I chatted with Evan Davis last Thursday on the PM show, BBC Radio 4.

It only lasts a few minutes and it might amuse you. It's brilliant 60.life is getting some publicity. One of my new year’s resolutions is to promote the blog properly, something I’ve singularly failed to do lately. Being on Radio 4 was a great start.

To do, or not to do

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:31 GMT

That is the question…

I interviewed Elizabeth Hurley many years ago and because she seemed super-organised, we touched on the art of list-making. But even she had to laugh when I revealed I sometimes make a list about what to put on my list.

A to-do list is the hook on which my life hangs. Do this. Do that. Do this first. Do this before EOP. Which all sounds highly proactive. Except I have a heap of things that languish at the bottom and would need carbon dating to pinpoint exactly how long they’ve been there.

I liken them to the items in my laundry basket that require hand-washing. That lay there for weeks, crushed by the day-to-day needs for fresh pants, socks, leggings and t-shirts. I still have a couple of muslin summer dresses at the lowest strata that need mending, so they’ll not see the light of day until Spring - the sartorial tulips of my linen box.

‘A to-do list is the hook on which my life hangs’

Thing is, when I look at the tasks that never get touched, ironically they’re quite important; update my will; re-roof the shed; sort the loft before it collapses. But they’re always passed over for ‘reply to yesterday’s emails’, which let’s face it, frequently include tasks from other people’s to-do lists, passed across like a red-hot rugby ball. The onus is then on you to carry that chore over the line. I try. But some mornings, when I open my eyes and think of all my own must-dos, I feel utterly overwhelmed.

Now, I could segue into writing a typical magazine piece, researching and reporting on more effective list-making, for example adding deadlines, batching similar tasks and breaking the complex ones down. I would likely talk about apps and psychological strategies. But I’m not going to do that…except to mention my mum’s salient advice concerning anything you don’t want to do: “It’s usually worse thinking about doing it than doing it”.

However, I’ve reached a point where plans for reorganising my to-do list are more radical (and I’m not talking bucket-list ideas like paddle a canoe up the Amazon). Having been so unwell with anxiety recently, at the top of mine now is to look after myself better, enlist some professional backup and stop bashing myself on the head with a giant air hammer for not being perfect.

‘I’m going to bring one big project to the top’

As for the pressing stuff, well yes, I may need to call IKEA about my Discombobulate desk or tell Natwest that Cora, the electronic helper, can’t seem to assist me. But I’ve realised this kind of stuff is never going away. In fact in the modern world, where the living is supposed to be easy, ticking off a task is akin to becoming the Sorcerer’s Apprentice – the action tends to generate two additional tasks.

Case in point: I type out an invoice and send. Tick. Four weeks later, the recipient can’t find said invoice. Please re-send. Tick. I receive thanks for the invoice but it needs to be sent as a PDF. Tick. Then I need to confirm I’m a sole trader and not on a par with Tesla. I hardly dare attend to this task for fear the next request will be, ‘Please come in and perform an audit of our accounts department’.

Of course, one has to do most of this boring stuff, but I’m going to start introducing lighter, brighter things such as ‘listen to the birds’ or ‘phone cousins I don’t speak to from one year to the next.’

I’m also going to bring one big project to the top. Something I’ve never started because I’ve been too busying turning invoices into PDFs or typing tips for magazines on trimming your bikini line. I’m going to write a book. A memoir that’s both poignant and funny, pivoting on ‘the familiar and the forgotten’, which is the beautiful way a reader called Rod poetically described my ‘60s column in the Telegraph .

Another thought… a very close friend who, along with my husband, has been looking after me while I’ve not been well, said rather than focussing on what I believe I’ve screwed up, make a list of everything I’ve achieved this year. She is, in my eyes, the ‘Oh Wise One’.

Dive, dive, dive

I’m thinking I could go further. Jot down experiences from way back too: survived school; studied for a degree; got the hang of posé turns in ballet; was invited on Lorraine Kelly’s show; met golden eagle hunters in Mongolia; did a dive in a submersible (thank you Viking Cruises); navigated my poor mum through dementia; got sacked from a job I hated; laughed so hard while reading a Bill Bryson book on the tube, the entire carriage stared at me. I could go on. And you could too.

So maybe that’s it. Alongside a to-do list, run a ‘Ta-Dah’ list. And every time you cross something boring off the first, add something interesting you’ve already done to the second. Wanna give it a go? Put it on your list.

Scent Packing

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:17:27 GMT

Why I’ve been nosey all my life

Once, when I'd been dumped by a boyfriend, I was so distraught, I kept his remains in a plastic sack. To be clear, the remains in question were a scarf and dressing gown he’d left behind in his bid to make a fast getaway. The reason I bagged them like some forlorn forensic scientist was because after I’d been doing the crying/drinking/drinking/crying thing, I grabbed the scarf and buried my face in it. What I expected to feel was a familiar scratchy woolliness. What I experienced was a more startling sensory jolt.

It smelled. Not of the fragrance he wore. Not of the hymn-bookyness of his slightly damp basement flat that would form a little lost cloud whenever I unzipped my weekend bag. It was pure eau de him. His skin. His hair. A smell I hadn’t really noticed when we were together. But as soon as he turned ghost lover, I felt compelled to hang onto it. A sort of sad version of Eternity not by Calvin Klein.

I knew at some point I’d have to crumple the items into the washing machine and end it all with a single shot of Surf. But I figured that while they remained unwashed, I could untwirl the bag, breathe in and bring him back to life. Not as bonkers as it sounds because after many years of writing about perfume, I’ve learned our sense of smell carries an awful lot of emotional baggage.

One of my still life set-ups when I was at Harrods Magazine.

Photo credit: Roberto Greco

The scents of experiences twist and turn and trail throughout our lives. In fact, I’m currently writing a piece for The Scented Letter about one of my favourite smells from childhood – the hardware shop - in particular, the local store that was a beacon of reliability and warmth in a row of 1970s shops that my father frequented. Sometimes, he’d be in there buying a ball of string or a tea strainer. Sometimes, he’d simply want a chat with the owner, a dependable chap in a neatly pressed, parcel-brown overall. And occasionally, he’d pop in to borrow a fiver (I never understood how my dad, beloved by just about everyone in the neighbourhood, could enter an emporium, purchase nothing at all and exit with cash).

The shop offered every widget known – and mostly unknown - to man. It greased the wheels of domesticity and helped make life in the ‘70s tick. Its odour profile was a mix of polishes, paints and paraffin resting on a woody base of scuffed, unvarnished floor. In comparison, today’s Robert Dyas is odoriferously neutral.

I always liked the smell of polish. Lavender. Beeswax. Pledge. However, when mingled with disinfectant, it took an olfactory turn for the worse because this was the smell of the dreaded dentist. While it doesn't bother me at all now, I was traumatised by the concept of dental surgery as a child. I couldn't understand how a perfectly normal looking detached house on a perfectly normal looking street, with a perfectly normal looking front door, could open straight into the bright jaws of hell. I can smell that surgery still. A squeaky sterility that swirled around the sounds of the whizzing drill and the scratchy intercom that beckoned the next patient to descend from the upstairs waiting room to the scariness below.

‘The oddly sweet smell of trolls’ hair’

What of nicer scents I recall? The dust on my ballet shoes that infiltrated every cranny of the red vanity case in which I used to transport my dance paraphernalia. The geraniums and tomatoes in the greenhouse that gave off that breath-shortening, fuzzy greenness. The oddly sweet smell of trolls’ hair. The oiliness of plasticine in my fingernails after I’d been shaping it into miniature manifestations of fruit. Play-Doh that you could (rather lazily in my opinion) squish through a press – its distinctive candy smell has since been trademarked by Hasbro.

I also remember the cheap but exciting, melamine-tinged interior of our holiday caravan - the hotter the weather, the more tinged it became. It was my first memory of travel. Naturally, my scents of adventure have become more sophisticated: the early morning vanilla air of Venice, wafting from cafés and bakeries; incense coiling ever upwards in Vietnamese temples; fiery spices in Old Delhi’s markets; and the steely clarity of Antarctica – funny how a lack of smell can become a smell of its own, rather like silence can seem almost deafening.

As for that bag with the scarf and dressing gown, I rapidly reached closure, so opened the bin liner and slammed the contents into the machine. An hour later, I was sniffing the items like a 1950s’ housewife. And yes, I was happy with my wash. In fact, the detergent manufacturers could add it to their claims. Erases grass stains, red wine, BO and OB (old boyfriends).

24 Little Hours

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 05:13:04 GMT

What a difference (or not) a day makes

Photo credit: Jan Masters

World Wildlife Day, I get. World Cancer Day, I get. World Oceans Day, I get. But now, there's a huge number of National and International Days and I can’t imagine how most of them came to be recognised. The US has a ton of them, such as National Drinking Straw Day, which, unless you’re promoting paper straws over plastic, sounds like a total non-event. Guess I'll just have to suck it up (badum, tish ).

There’s also National Static Electricity Day, although no one knows which bright spark came up with that one. OK, OK, enough with the bad gags. Although I did have a grin at National Blame Someone Else Day (which for a lot of folk, is pretty much every day). And there’s a part of me that - shiver me timbers – does rather approve of Talk Like A Pirate Day.

The UK is not immune, for we lay claim to National Telegraph Pole Appreciation Day. At first, I envisioned power operatives dancing round the lofty structures, weaving patterns with ribbons. But the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society has put me straight, revealing it’s when you might like to photograph a telegraph pole or write a poem about one. I would suggest if you want to do it properly, just listen to Glen Campbell’s The Wichita Lineman . A more evocative story in a single song, you’re hard pressed to find.

‘Take Your Common Sense To Work Day’

But rather than get irritated about these strange national days, I would like to offer my own ideas. Ahem. Firstly, Take Your Common Sense To Work Day. Now this is a risky one that could get you into trouble. Because as far as I can fathom, the last thing most companies seem to want you to do is show common sense.

No, what they favour is convolution, obfuscation and jargonised lexicons. They want to hire disruptors, change-makers and consultants who have significantly less idea what’s needed than the long-serving, long-suffering staff. They want systems that take you to more dead ends than Hampton Court maze. In short, they want longer meetings.

If you were to bring your common sense to work (rather than your dog/child/parent) it would mean airing suggestions such as investing in staff who have do-ey type jobs, rather than shelling out vast sums on those who have more pointy-at-blue-skyey jobs. But I say let’s drag our poor old battered, bruised, disregarded common sense in for eight hours of centre stage action, which would probably sort out most problems pronto. Alas, I can’t see this ever catching on.

We’re in danger of becoming unquestioning automatons

Next, I Am Not A Robot Day. Because unless we make this point and mean it, we'll turn into unquestioning automatons. Recently, I was at a restaurant of a certain cheap and cheerful chain with a big group of friends when it transpired we had to order our meals on our phones. So instead of engaging in conversation, we were heads down, plonking potato wedges in our baskets. We then realised we had to pay with Apple Pay or download some app or scan the QR code for the Bank of England.

I refused. I went to the woman on the till, where I found her not using her till but helping a number of customers work out how to pay on their phones. Thing was, she took my order in ten seconds flat and it came out before most of the others. One girl’s didn’t appear at all because she’d forgotten to check out, so her peri-peri chicken was still marinating in her shopping cart. I mean.

And while we’re on the high street, I’d like to put forward, No Mince Pies Unless It’s December Month, closely followed by No Hot Cross Buns Unless It’s Easter Week. I think these two are fairly self-explanatory.

Let’s hear it for Steely Dan

Photo credit: Jollero Records on eBay

My penultimate suggestion is Listen To Steely Dan Day. Now I must apologise here because last week I mentioned Joan Armatrading and this week, yet more music refs (I will stop). But Katie Lied was one of those albums that helped me open my ears to the poetry of life within lyrics. I also had to look up what a ‘piastre’ was that Donald Fagen had borrowed and promptly spent. Perhaps we could listen to the track Black Friday actually on Black Friday, even though the term is now retail-related, as opposed to having a market-crashing meaning. But as one YouTube commenter said, ‘Every crazy day deserves a good song’.

And finally, Global Ask An Elderly Person About Their Life Day. Because if we let their recollections and lessons and sufferings and laughter and insights die without listening because we’re too busy jabbing our phones ordering a smoky boneless chicken thigh, then it will be a sadder world. In fact, perhaps we should pool our ideas, go the whole hog and create a National Let’s Think Of A Useful National Day Day. Ooh arr, me hearties.

The Sound of Comfort

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 09 Oct 2022 16:25:51 GMT

Re-tuning my antennae to old themes

Apparently, the Department of Health and Social Care is launching a campaign to help people – particularly youngsters – deal with the ‘Sunday Scaries’. Those feelings of dread about the new week at work. I guess it’s like when I was a child and the thought of school gave me the ‘pack-your-pencil-case blues’. And if I heard the theme to Robinson Crusoe - music so deeply, heartbreakingly sad - there were tears before bedtime.

As I got to my teens, what made me feel even more dreary of a Sunday evening was hearing my dad tune into a radio programme called Sing Something Simple . The theme tune was so croony and corny, it crushed my spirit that little bit more, although as a side effect, it did make my dad’s Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass LPs sound positively punk.

Sing Something Saccharine ran for 42 years and featured the Cliff Adams Singers accompanied by Jack Emblow on his accordion. The announcer would invite everyone to join in ‘with all those songs you know so well’. Dutifully, my dad would whistle his way through 30 minutes of agonising schmaltz that stretched back to his youth, spanned the war and reflected his early life in London. I just couldn’t understand what he saw in it. Not when that very same evening he had the terrific option of Tom Browne’s velvety voice running down the Top 20.

‘A cave of teenage rebellion’

Neither could I comprehend my mum’s choice of watching old movies like Top Hat or Road to Morocco if she felt stressed. Again, I rolled my eyes. There she was, sitting in front of a top of the range colour TV, on hire from Redifussion, and her televisual preferences were all black and white. And if my aunt was round at the time, there'd be much chat about how they copied Ginger’s hair, segueing into endless conversations about dance dresses cut on the bias.

At this, I would retreat to my room, a cave of would-be teenage rebellion, which in terms of tame suburbia was just very dark and featured a purloined metal ‘men at work’ road sign. I can’t believe my parents let me keep it. And it was a true act of devotion that when I asked my dad to take a walk on the wild side of interior design by knocking up some fake traffic lights, he duly obliged, allowing me to hang out in middle-of-the-road bliss.

Danger, teenager in a grump

Cut to the (almost) present day. The first lockdown. When TV boxsets, Netflix and Amazon Prime came into their own as there was bugger all else to do. This was when Paul and I started a habit of pouring a large gin and tonic at 5pm and watching re-runs of The Sweeney , a programme my mum banned me from viewing on account of it being too violent.

After the intervening years, it was like a social history lesson. Quite an eyeopener, seeing Regan and Carter tearing about Saarf London in a Ford Granada, parking up wherever they liked, before bursting into a bedroom shouting, ‘Get your trousers on son, you’re nicked'. I suppose now, we’d be listening to a formal ten page reading of the crim’s rights.

As for the opening theme, it was all staccato, hard-hitting excitement, summing up the show in seconds. But it was the end credits that got me. A soulful, melancholic rendition of the same melody. Reflective sadness after the tough-guy scenes.

This encouraged us to lap up more old TV tec shows. Columbo. Bergerac. Oh my God, how gorgeous was John Nettles then, all blue eyes and blouson jackets? I suppose this explains why I still had a soft spot for him when he upped sticks to Midsomer Warble - or was it one of the other 184 Midsomer villages?

All blue eyes and blouson jackets

What I love about watching an ep of Bergerac now is that the world seemed so much simpler then: no tech (unless you count the episode about Jersey’s first computer conference, starring Michael Gambon); roads had very few markings and zero cameras; fashion was totally un-chic, full of exuberant oven-ready, metallic frocks; and Charlie’s buffet groaned with bright pink prawn cocktails, doubtless sprinkled with cigar ash.

Then there was Jim and Susan walking along the beach to Joan Armatrading’s Love And Affection . That song… goosebumps. Go play it now on YouTube. Warning: You’re liable to get sucked into other so-good songs and themes, so say ta-ta to a good hour .

Guess who played the accordion?

What this all this means is that at last, I understand why my mum and dad sometimes dipped into reminders of their early days, a time when the world made more sense to them. Indeed, I was chatting about this with my friend Alan, who's big in special effects in the film industry. Turns out one of his first jobs was working up the opening credits of Bergerac, w here the map of Jersey turns into good old Jim’s name and that fab music kicks in with a shimmer of cymbal. And who played the accordion? You’ve guessed it. Jack Emblow! I take it back Jack. All is forgiven.

Footnote: DJ Tom Browne has retir ed to Thailand, where he has a mushroom and rice farm.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 09:19:14 GMT

…And save me from President Tony

A few weeks ago, I was in the South of France, dining in the magical garden of an old house that had been owned by one family for centuries. Before dessert, an Italian guest sweetly enquired after the health of the Queen, almost as if I regularly saw Her Majesty for a spot of tea. I replied that she was very frail and the nation would feel a deep sense of loss when she’d gone. A Scandinavian chap by my side listened politely. Then announced there was no place for a hereditary monarchy in modern life.

I disagree. Not because I blindly revere the Royal Family or think they’re better than you and me. Patently, they’re not. It’s just I happen to think as a system for running a country, it’s scarily easy to do a hell of a lot worse – consider all the presidents who are right royally cocking up the world.

Many people have pointed out to me that giving someone the top job just because they were born into it is not only utterly absurd but profoundly wrong. I can see the tree they're barking up. After all, the Queen didn’t get to be Queen because she burnished her CV, filled out an application form and went through a rigorous interview process. Nor did she go all-out to canvass for votes, hold hustings and appear on TV in a head-to-head with rivals, ready to bet the farm she’d gain enough votes to win the crown.

But for me, that’s the whole point. I’d be mighty cautious about someone who actually wants - and actively pursues - the role of head of state. Someone who covets that much power. Someone who is happy to live a weird, goldfish bowl life for a few years before the scratch and scramble to be top dog ensues all over again. Perhaps it’s better that someone has the job thrust upon them, whether they like it or not. And if they feel suitably dutiful and honour-bound to give it a go, they just get on with it.

‘We still have that vote-them-in-chuck-em-out option’

Again, anti-monarchists would say the fact presidents can be kicked out and replaced is what makes such a system of governing thoroughly democratic and modern-minded. But we still have that vote-them-in-chuck-em-out option with our prime ministers. After all, the Queen lived to see 15 of them. Every week, they had to hack up to Buck House after being heckled in the Commons to sit quietly by a corgi and tell her Maj what they’d been up to and why. Strange as it may sound, I think that probably focused political minds.

A British sovereign is the symbolic head and yes, much of the time, while the MPs are thrashing out the business of the day, the monarch is opening a precinct in Pontypridd or listening to ‘ If you’re happy and you know it ’ at a care home in West Wittering. But that symbolism holds a particular kind of gravitas. Sure, it might involve men in black tights and a straggly wig who would agree to walk like a funky chicken if tradition dictated, but baggy tights notwithstanding, give me that in preference to a leader in a mid-grey suit asking us to call him Tone.

The world will be watching the Queen’s funeral

Look, every system has its philosophical holes. I mean if US presidents are such a shining example of the ultimate democracy, why, for a start, do they have a First Lady who didn’t get any votes at all? Democrats, we know, are very keen on absolute equality and earning your stripes, none more so than the Duchess of Sussex. So why has she retained a title that’s hers purely because she married a bloke who, through dint of birth, is a prince but no longer even works as a royal?

Frankly, holes and all, I’m proud of the UK’s ability to orchestrate something as stunning and stirring as a state funeral for a Queen who worked right up until the very last days of her long life: the crisp lines of soldiers; the clockwork precision of the coffin-bearers that shoulder the country’s weight of expectation; the sound of horses’ hooves; the soaring choral music - an historic occasion where emotions won’t necessarily be worn on braided sleeves. But that won’t detract from the genuine feelings of grief experienced by countless mourners. In fact, in some ways, the stiff upper lippyness of it all will serve to intensify the emotion.

Queen Elizabeth II was a constant in so many of our lives. And in a fast moving, and now bewildering, world that gets more bloody bewildering by the day, if King Charles III is up for grasping the baton and taking it forward, I say good luck to him and Godspeed.

Parental Guidance Required

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 09:44:25 GMT

When it’s time to take over the reins

Over a decade ago, my 86 year old dad died in his beloved garden. There’d been no warning. One minute, he was taking life in his super-active stride, pruning trees, doing chores for ‘old people’ (who were younger than him), going to jazz clubs and lamenting or hailing Arsenal’s performance. The next, he was gone.

I dashed to my parents’ home from London to find a policeman guarding his body at the spot where my childhood swing used to stand. Apparently, as dad had rarely been to the doctor and wasn’t registered as suffering from any illnesses, they had to treat his sudden demise as ‘suspicious’ until it was confirmed otherwise. Later, we learned he’d had a heart attack.

This swift exit would have been my dad’s preference. He was perpetually cracking jokes and revelling in his self-appointed role as Mr Limelight, so it was as if he’d simply announced, ‘You’ve been a great audience, good night'. Then he dropped the mic.

My dad, taking centre stage

Little did I know at that moment, a baton was passed to me. He’d been covering for my mother who had stopped going out, retreating from life. As the only child, I had to jump straight into the driving seat, running her household, sorting out finances, ordering her food, while juggling my own home and job.

It’s a saddening, unsettling time when you become your parent’s parent. In my childhood, mum and dad had always held the reins. Later, they were the safe harbour to which I could always return. Suddenly, I had to reinvent myself as the wise elder, a role I’d never limbered up to play. Many mid-lifers who are caring for aged parents, often have children to worry about too, while holding down a busy job. The multi-directional pulling can sometimes feel overwhelming.

‘It’s an unsettling time when you become your parent’s parent’

After a couple of years of limping along, finding and funding carers, I knew the funny, philosophical mum was disappearing. Fast. She had become more and more confused and there was no question in my mind she had dementia. However, the GPs, on the isolated occasions I could get them to visit, decided that on that score, she was fine. This seemed to hinge on the basis she knew (just about) that David Cameron was (just about) the prime minister.

When social workers visited, they agreed with the medical professionals that mum still had ‘capacity’, despite my observations to the contrary - trying to dial a phone number on a large radio was just one of numerous clues. However, this decree meant I couldn’t make any serious decisions on mum’s behalf. Instead, suggested solutions included meals on wheels.

A while after, because I knew we were way beyond the reach of what a lunchtime cauliflower cheese could achieve, we called an ambulance. Skeletally frail and frightened, it was in A&E that we got the help mum needed. Not just because she was very ill and clearly in no state to go home, but because she knew for a fact that the current prime minister was Jim Callaghan. I’m not proud to say this but as I heard her whisper Jim’s name, mentally, I punched the air. Surely now, there’d be some consensus.

There was. She was admitted to a high dependency unit and as I was released from my role as chief of staff, I could start loving her properly, not in a drained, distraught and distracted way. What was hard to bear, though, was hearing her cry out for her mum. The poignancy of someone of 89 calling for a long-gone parent was unbelievably heart-breaking.

Mum had always looked out for me

Three weeks later, she died. Registered cause? Dementia. I learned many things during that time. That those close to an elderly relative know when something is not right, even if that person is incredibly firm mates with the current PM. Another is that at different times in our lives, we are all children, regardless of age, and we are also likely to be parents of some kind, even if we’ve never had babies of our own. But when aged, gravely ill mums and dads pass away, perhaps then, we can start to revert to being children again. Because gradually, very gradually, the memories of mum in her prime returned.

She used to wave a yellow duster out of the landing window when it was playtime at my nearby school, just to say, ‘Hello, I’m here’. I remember her scooping me up every time I got dumped by a boyfriend. Laughing ourselves silly when I got sacked from a terrible job. Embracing me with the words, ‘Nothing is the end of the world,’ before adding, ‘well, except the end of the world’, an unexpected adjunct that made snot fly out my nose. So if, when I’m shuffling off my own mortal coil, I cry out for her, these will be a few of the many reasons why.

Avant Gardener

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 13:11:50 GMT

The benefits of being upfront

Photo credit: Liz Seabrook

Coloured gnomes. Plastic roses. Buddhas with pink lipstick. A Victorian lampstand. A wishing well. No wait, two wishing wells. When I was interviewing Diarmuid Gavin a while back, he showed me a photograph of a pink semi-detached house with a mint-green roof, surrounded by hundreds of such ornaments. It wasn’t a kitsch creation dreamt up by Diarmuid. It’s the garden that, 30 years ago, piqued his interest in challenging and cheering up strait-laced suburbia.

‘This little space had an effect on everybody who saw it,’ he told me. ‘Kids adored it, although it tended to make adults really annoyed, even angry. If my parents had visitors over and went for a walk, they would rush the guests past it. But when I started to study garden design I became fascinated by it because of what it represented; the private passion of the woman who lived there.’

My front garden is tiny. And devoid of Buddhas. With or without lipstick. It is but a sliver in west London. But a few years back, I decided to make the most of it. I placed a plethora of pots on top of the recycling cupboard, studded the flower bed with salvias and sedums, and in the spring planters, I went bat-tulip crazy: Belicia unfurled like ruffly silk ballgowns, their hems dipped in raspberry ink; Belle Epoque seduced in satin sepia; while Queen of the Night stood statuesque in Stygian splendour.

This year, I went tulip crazy

Beyond the beauty of seeing things bud and blossom, I’ve benefitted mentally. It has helped ease the severe anxiety that's long been my torturer, so quick to target my vulnerabilities, terrorise my thoughts and toy with me as I struggle. During the worst times, I’ve always managed - just - to carry on working. Dancing. Seeing the world. But gardening has proved invaluable. If I can push myself out there to pull weeds, sow seeds and turn over the soil, I start to appreciate the get-on-with-it reality of nature.

‘I appreciate the get-on-with-it reality of nature’

The therapy doesn’t stop at my gate. I believe the front garden is also important to passersby. Because so many people now stop to chat when I’m out there pottering and watering. I’ve met neighbours who I’d never spoken to before. Heard gossip I would never have heard ( noooo, really). Made friends with people who, without my garden slowing their stride, would have remained strangers as they hurried on home. My little garden is able to divert them. Delight them. Draw us together.

It makes me think of dad’s horticultural obsessions. Back in the 80s, he would line up red geraniums, blue lobelia and white allison in regimental rows of the kind more suited to The Mall when the Queen was hosting a visiting dignitary. As for the lawn, it was in better nick than the carpets indoors. Even in droughts, he would hook up baths and sinks so that waste water flowed onto the grass. At the end of summer, everything had the faint whiff of Fairy Liquid.

Gardening helps me deal with severe anxiety

Photo credit: Liz Seabrook

In those days, most front gardens were tended. Some were formal. Others, more cottagey. I particularly remember Mike who specialised in roses. As a child with an acutely sensitive nose, I hated the manure that he piled up around them. The smell used to make me heave – once, I even puked in the gutter. I’m guessing that wasn’t the effect Mike was hoping for.

Front gardens changed when people began to own not one, but two, cars. Spaces were concreted over. There was no room for cheery marigolds when there was a Mazda to park, a practice that resulted in rain running off into the road, heading for drains too clogged up to cope. With the addition of battalions of daleks – I’m talking wheelie bins – and more litter blowing in like tumbleweed, many urban roads became depressingly dismal.

I think the tide is turning a touch. When a few people dig in and create a little oasis – or even just plant up a few window boxes - others often follow suit. It reminds me of the ‘broken window theory’. That if public spaces aren’t looked after, it encourages a downward spiral: the more rubbish there is, the more rubbish is thrown; the more graffiti is sprayed, the more will be daubed; and the more crime that exists, the more crime will escalate. But here’s the thing - when the local environment, even at a personal level, is kempt, it stands a better chance of being kept that way. Respected. So the more front gardens that are bedecked, whether it’s with bluebells or Buddhas, wisteria or wishing wells, the better for our collective mood. Let’s grow a sense of community.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Again

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 11:55:41 GMT

Well I was walking down the street, just a-having a think

I believe it was Albert Einstein in his seminal theory of time who said that as one gets older, bin day comes round quicker. Indeed, time runs so swiftly for me now, an event I would hazard a guess happened three years ago, often turns out to be more like seven. As for the rarely seen offspring of acquaintances, in my head they remain a toddler – at most, a teen – so it’s always a shocker when I ask after little Liam and it turns out he’s a pilot for Easyjet. Where on earth does the time go?

It was all so different as a child. To paraphrase Madonna, time went by…so slowly. Seasons stretched forever. The six-week school holiday was a long, languorous mid-summer dream. And everything was enveloped in an enormous patchwork of pleasure. Who’d have thought peddling bikes on baking pavements or sucking ice cream through a bitten-off cornet – a taste sensation akin to eating damp orange cardboard - would feel like experiences of neverending joy?

Back to the future

What’s kind of weird is when I look back at the various chapters of my life, it feels as though I’m reviewing a series of segmented films. Different worlds. A different me. Yet recently, a few friends from the dim and distant have been in contact - three I hadn’t seen for forty years – and within minutes of chatting, we had picked up the gossamer threads of lost connections, reeling each other in as easily as if we had spoken just the other week. Perhaps I haven’t changed as much as I think. Perhaps the characteristics that attracted us and the exploits that bound us, bind us still.

So how about the future? Well now I’m 60, I’m more than a little miffed that most of the direct marketing I receive is about winding things up. Or down. Stairlifts. Retirement homes. Funeral plans. Oh do bugger off with your presumptions. If and when I need one, I’ll call you. Not least because I believe now is the time for us mature types, if we are physically/mentally able, to start looking to the future and hatching horizon-pushing plans. Not colluding with some collective notion of writing us off.

‘Now is the time to hatch horizon-pushing plans’

Indeed, scientific theories back me up. According to Dr Christian ‘Kit’ Yates, Senior Lecturer in the department of mathematical sciences at the University of Bath, if we want to apply the brakes and extend – not contract - our perception of time as we age, we should start doing more, not less.

The theory goes something like this. When the brain is taking in lots of new information and all kinds of stuff you’ve never dealt with before (which is what happens in childhood) it does so really quickly, which has the effect of slowing down our perception of time. It’s why a week’s holiday jampacked with a host of different outings and adventures can feel much longer than a week at work twiddling with your backgrounds on Teams. The extreme example is what often happens in an accident – it’s not unusual for those involved to report they noticed every detail, feeling as though they were watching the incident unfold in slo-mo.

The opposite is also often true. When faced with a same-old-same-old, repetitive lifestyle, with little new stimuli for the mind to process, perceived time tends to speed up. So Dr Yates suggests if you feel time is moving too quickly and your life is running out too fast, the answer is to travel, to go to places you’ve never been before, to participate and appreciate new things. He sums it up thus: ‘Stimulate your brain like it’s the start of August and you’re seven, holding an ice lolly and running down a sand dune for the first time.’ I couldn’t agree more. What say we all grab a Lyons Maid Zoom and I’ll meet you at the beach?

It’s ‘Complificated’

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 08:00:00 GMT

Why the living is no longer easy

It has to be one of the greatest ironies. That our computers constantly ask us to prove we’re human (I think the comments page here initially requests such validation). And we dutifully oblige. By ticking the squares that contain American fire hydrants (how come fire hydrants became so crucial in the great Human v Robot showdown?). Granted, sometimes it’s pedestrian crossings. Or buses. All featured in grainy, desaturated photographs that look like they’ve been shot by a trainspotter type touring Arkansas in the 80s. Maybe that’s intentional. Maybe this is the very thing that outwits a bot. But as far as progress goes, why am I pondering if the post of a traffic light still counts as a traffic light when I’ve got a hundred other jobs to do?

Nothing is simple anymore. Parking. Now that’s really tricky. In order to slot your Subaru into a space in a different location, you’ll doubtless need to download yet another app - RinGo, DinGo, PinGo or PonGo. I call all this the ‘Complification of Modern life’. Online shopping is full of such nonsense. When I’m considering which tulip bulbs to buy, why do I need to know that Sharon in Cleethorpes has just bought a peace lily? Am I supposed to punch the air and say ‘Let’s hear it for Sharon. Give peace a chance’. Or do they really think Sharon’s purchasing prowess is going to pressure me into buying my Amazing Parrot tulips forthwith?

And why, once you’ve made a purchase, do you get bombarded with ideas for the very same thing you’ve just bought? If I’ve shelled out for a duvet, what I might want to buy next is a lemon squeezer. Or a trampoline. What I’m highly unlikely to want is another bloody duvet. Sure, I understand that whole ‘people who bought this duvet also bought these pillows’ thing. But why stop there? Why not tell us about their other recent retail combos; ‘people who bought this spanner also bought a negligee’?

Even ordering tea can be complificated

In the ‘complification’ of life, we have over-created, over-styled, overreached and over-burdened our lives in the quest to over-connect, over-accumulate and, here’s the really stupid part, make life easier. What a joke. Not only is so much of modern life ridiculously convoluted, most of us have no real understanding of both the intricacies and massive scale of systems that run, say, automated supply chains (which doubtless incorporate cheap labour too). We rarely imagine the millions - and it is in the millions - of shipping containers that are currently traversing the oceans. And they’re not all crammed with life-saving equipment. Rather a plethora of stuff that enables Celia from Staines to buy a cheap brolly (by the way, she also bought wellingtons).

We don’t really consider, as we look at yet another cute video of a puppy, the sprawling server farms that are required to contain and preserve all that data. The power that’s needed to run them. To cool them. In general, we’ve become so addicted to immediate results and instant gratification, we’re in danger of not thinking very deeply about very much at all. Because in the main, the computer says 'yes'. And our short term desires are fulfilled. Unless, of course, one fails the fire hydrant test.

We’re in danger of not thinking very deeply about very much at all.

It's when I’m travelling that I really notice ‘complifcation’ most, especially on arriving at a hotel. Tired and often only staying for a short while, I have neither the time nor inclination to take the half-day training seminar that is truly required if you are to operate the room’s lights, TV or shower successfully. Once, in a Buenos Aires establishment, I couldn’t fathom how to close the curtains. Tried everything. In the end I attempted to do it manually and broke them. I broke curtains. You might say this is style over substance, but I believe true style is all about simplicity.

It should also be about longevity. Obsolescence is the shadow that haunts so much of what we buy. My parents naturally gravitated towards sustainable decisions without realising it. They repaired much of what they owned with parts they could still get hold of years after the item was made. Their bathroom didn’t change for 40 years. They never once said, ‘These taps still work fine but I would like ones that sprinkle in a different way’. We all go on about sustainability, but in truth, most of us buy too much that’s deemed disposable too soon.

The very essence of ‘complification’ was apparent when recently, I was last at Toronto airport. Fancying a hot beverage, we went to the restaurant by the gate. Every table had touchscreen menus bolted on, and you paid by tapping your card on another piece of kit, also bolted to the table. Very little human interaction was required. It felt more like ordering tea in the Space Station. Tasted like it too. At that moment, I longed for the days of cafés furnished with old Formica tables, where a steaming brew was brought to you by a lady called Madge who addressed everyone as ‘love’. And no-one was offended.

First Jobs

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:55:02 GMT

Expectations may vary

When it comes to the world of work, it seems Gen Z has a serious checklist of expectations. Analysing a number of recent surveys, businessinsider.com revealed many Gen Zers are, among other things, looking for a company that aligns with their personal views and values, provides access to mental health support and gives them the chance to set their own hours. They are also ambitious to transform ‘perks’ into ‘norms’. Some are even looking to be able to delegate to their bosses.

I had no such demands when I showed up at my first job nearly 40 years ago. Having gained 12 ‘O’ levels, three ‘A’ levels (which I compressed into nine months' study) and a degree in English Literature, all that concerned me was that I might mess up the simplest of tasks and appear un-useful. Far from oozing confidence from every pore, my self-belief leached from my being like a Tetley tea bag in boiling water. So it was with great trepidation that I arrived at Wine Magazine (then called What Wine? ) on my inaugural day of gainful employment. So nervous was I, that for the first two weeks I took a Thermos and Marmite sandwiches so I could sit and have lunch in my Mini to save any embarrassment if nobody wanted to eat with me.

I had been hired to assist in the mysterious ways of editorial production, so oenophilia (which sounds a bit dodge but alludes to a devotion to all things vino-related) was unnecessary. This was lucky because as a family, we rarely drank wine at home, and when we did, it was Liebfraumilch (or Mateus Rosé if we fancied fashioning a lamp base afterwards). Besides which, my mother always added lemonade to her glass to ‘sweeten it’, duly proffering a slug of R. White’s to every guest in the belief they too, might wish to partake of their wine in a similar manner.

An early job, way before hot-desking

The magazine resided in a large open plan office over the House of Holland in Teddington, which had nothing to do with the fashion brand created by Henry Holland. It was a catalogue-based furniture and lifestyle store that facilitated the viewing of the no-frills side table or jelly-coloured paddling pool you’d only seen in print, an unmissable opportunity to check if reality matched the hype.

One flight of stairs up, the wine mag, which was aimed at consumers, sat alongside a more serious wine and spirts periodical for the trade, as well as a car magazine that prided itself on long-term vehicle tests, thus rendering us the Drink & Drive department.

I never appreciated at the time (why would I?) that it would forever remain my favourite job thanks to the cross-section of good humoured employees who worked there. From the whisky specialist, who was also an opera singer and used to practice scales in the toilets, to an art editor with long, carrot red hair, who wore a sweeping coat, round Lennon shades and dropped the odd, delicious detail about his life-affirming weekends at Henge. Even his referring to Stone Henge simply as ‘Henge’, where I’d been only been once on a school trip, impressed me greatly.

These days, we’d have been marched straight to HR

At this establishment of genuinely talented journalists, there was always time in the day for practical jokes, many aimed at the larger-than-life boss who had his own his office. I say ‘office’. It was more precisely a cubicle, his door merely an aperture between two freestanding padded panels. One prank required particularly devoted intent. Every day for over a fortnight, selected members of the team would move the entrance panels closer to each other by millimetres, diminishing the dimensions of his doorway with glacial speed until the day came when he was forced to turn slightly sideways in order to enter his domain. When it finally dawned on him what was going on, he took it in good heart (loudly) inspiring splinter groups to get going on the next plan without further ado. No doubt today, we'd have been marched straight to HR.

Practical jokes aside, great work still got done. Although there were a couple of memorable cock-ups. The magazine used to run extensive wine tastings in the basement of a west London wine bar. In the corners of the room were spittoons into which, after the prerequisite slurping and swirling was actioned, the frothy, freshly salivated wine would be projected in a bid to avoid intoxication. After this, the tasters - both experts and a smattering of celebrities - would write down a description of the sensory experience that could be as perfunctory or poetic as they wished.

On one occasion, an invitee was professional wrestler, Mick McManus. Known as ‘The Man You Love To Hate’, he had a massive TV following in his day, with a goodly proportion of his fans middle aged women and grandmas who avidly watched his cavorting of a Saturday afternoon as he toppled opponents such as Catweazle and Kung Fu. A colourful character, he lived to be 93 and knew more than a thing or two about wine. Of a certain tipple - a Robert Mondavi 1980 Chardonnay I believe - he was quoted as saying, ‘Suits my taste.’ But somehow – and how, we shall never know – the ‘u’ in ‘suits’ became an ‘h’. Knockout.

My favourite goof, though, centred on a Guinness competition which the art department decided to W.O.B, a latter day printing term that instructed the typesetters to transpose the text and background, making the type ‘White Out of Black’. We felt it was a touch of creative genius. The instruction, however, somehow managed to include the coupon that in those days, you had to fill out with a pen, before slipping it into an actual envelope and posting it in a physical post box.

In the spirit of good things happening to those who wait, we realised that with the best will in the world, participants couldn’t write on a black form with an ordinary Biro. Not that this stopped people trying. We received hundreds of illegible forms with only the spidery feet of words planted on the white dotted lines. It was all highly embarrassing and we had to re-run the competition the next month. My editor, who had already handled the situation with the sponsors with great aplomb, called us in to discuss the fiasco. Naturally, we were as nervous as hell. He held the W.O.B competition page aloft, smartly slapped it with the back of his fingers, then laughed so hard, his words turned into virtually inaudible high-pitched squeaks, interspersed with the wiping away of tears. Good times. And a great boss, from whom I learned a lot. He inspired me to write.

My dream was to make it into women's magazines, so I came up with the idea of collecting empty wine bottles from the tastings, soaking off the labels, relabelling them with names of big-time editors and sending them off with a rolled-up note tucked inside saying, ‘Help, I’m stuck on a wine magazine.’ It worked.

While generally, millennials and Gen Z seem to have considerably more chutzpah in the workplace than I ever did (the wine bottle gag notwithstanding) I think the expectations of what a job owed the newly employed started to change at least 20 years ago. When I was the Beauty Director of Cosmopolitan , at a point when the magazine was at its zenith of success, we had a number of young people come through the door on work experience. My department was right next to the editor’s office, which was a glass cube, laid with a red carpet and furnished with a cream sofa. Within it, the ed sat, slick and scary.

I asked one workie, who had never had so much as a Saturday job, to go through the Cosmo beauty post on her first morning, a task that could be relied upon to produce a slew of seductive samples from brands such as Gucci and Chanel. To make it even more interesting, I suggested she put aside any products and press releases she thought might make suitable stories for the Beauty News section. By 11 o’clock, she stood by my desk and announced she was going. I very politely replied I thought it was a bit early for lunch, but she repeated her intention with more clarity: ‘No, I’m leaving. This wasn’t what I had in mind for my magazine career at all.’

Wine Magazine wasn’t what I had in mind for mine either. It was way, way better than I could ever have imagined.

Best Foot Forward

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:54:12 GMT

People – the true treasures of travel

As pedicures go, it was more interesting than the average. Not just because I was in a spa on a ship, looking out at the sun scintillating on the water, although that was undoubtedly cool. It was because in the next cubicle, Linda from North Carolina was having her hair done by Mario from the Philippines. Now usually, I can't abide hearing chitchat in a treatment space, but this was different. Because I was a party to a convo that you could have put on the radio, pretty much unedited, and it would have been as engaging as it was edifying.

Linda had already introduced herself to me in reception, commenting I spoke the Queen’s English. She, by contrast, spoke the luxuriously lilting lingo of Dolly Parton. Now doubtless, she could probably point to a number of nuances that rule that comparison out, but to someone from West London, it sounded Dixie-delicious to me. Like listening to mellifluous country music minus the guitars.

From the get-go, Linda gave Mario carte blanche to do his darndest in the hair department. The minute he started shampooing, she could tell she was in the hands of a pro. I know this because she told him. By the time she was having a blueberry scalp massage, I’d also learned that when she trusts a professional, she shows them great loyalty. Maintains devotion, even if they’re still working into their seventies. Meanwhile, my beauty therapist was judiciously but silently buffing my feet. Back and forth. Back and forth. Filing away sans comment. Truth is, we both had our ears to the wall.

Mario, who’d been all over the world, loved to travel in Europe because just walking through cities with their old buildings was like meandering through a living museum. I’d never really thought about London like that. While I gamely gallivant to the far-flung, I fail to dwell and devour the details on my own doorstep. My loss.

Linda, meanwhile, had come to additional conclusions about travel. That most good people around the globe are very similar at heart. They want much the same things. Suffer the same sadnesses. Share the same hopes. She summed it up thus: ‘We all get up in the morning’. She paused. Mario paused. My pedicurist paused. I paused.

I found Linda to be one of the happiest people I’d come across in a while. Did she live some charmed life that kept her chipper? It was only later, during a torrential downpour on a hike, when we sheltered in an old bar and drank wine, that I discovered her husband had died a few years back. That she’d sold up everything and moved, having to start over. That a friend had been due to accompany her on this cruise but had pulled out, so Linda had decided to brave it and come alone.

Except she hadn't come alone. She'd come with a spirit of love, interest and enthusiasm for other people and their lives, and in that, she couldn’t have packed lighter and more appropriately if she’d tried.

It got me thinking about the often untold benefits of travel. The non-brochure bonuses. Sure, I’ve clocked up some out-there experiences and for that, I am eternally grateful. I’ve spent time with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, photographed polar bears padding along glaciers in the Arctic, swam in the brisk waters of Antarctica (albeit for two minutes), seen the Taj Mahal at dawn, the Namib Desert at dusk.

But thinking back, it’s often the people I’ve met who have affected me the most. Case in point: I can’t look at a simple business card now and not feel ashamed at how much I take for granted. Why? Because in India, a young lad who earned a living transporting people around Jodhpur in a battered tuk tuk, showed me his most prized possession. It was a dusty plastic wallet that held the business cards he’d amassed from folks who, like me, visit a city out of interest, in great comfort, then disappear. All we left were calling cards. We should leave more.

I remember the old woman in a village in Myanmar with her turquoise turban and beautiful expression, punctuated by a tiny chip in her front tooth. Instead of the hardships she’d experienced, of which there were many, she pointed to the immediate joys – her grandchildren taking flowers to the shrine.

I recall the man whose job it was to sit high on a jagged mountain that overlooked a sharp bend in the mighty Mekong River – if two boats were on a potential collision course, he’d emerge from beneath his tattered awning that barely protected him from the scorching sun and wave a flag like fury.

I think of the chat I had with a scientist, elbows propped on the southernmost bar in the world. He worked at the Vernadsky research station in Antarctica and had knocked up some vodka, a dollar a shot. Well, what else do you do, apart from scientific calculations, when the pack ice parks up for months on end?

In fact, when I Interviewed Michael Palin just before I left for a trip to Papua New Guinea, he said what he had come to realise from his journeying is there is more that unites than divides us. Inordinate numbers of ordinary citizens value similar essentials - shelter, food, security, fulfilment, fun, belonging to a family. And often, when you travel, strangers who take you under their wing can feel like family for that snapshot in time. We may not be related by blood. Nor share a backstory. But we are bound by our reactions to each other’s everyday experiences, even when one person’s everyday experience can seem quite extraordinary to another.

My pedicure complete, I planted my beautified feet back on the ground, glad I looked well-shod but more grateful for the philosophy lesson in getting back in touch with my roots. Like the best blueberry scalp massage Mario could deliver, it was just darlin’.

The Crying Game

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 11:48:38 GMT

The lachrymose nature of light entertainment

Cooking shows. Dancing shows. Pottery shows. Sewing shows. There’s one thing they have in common. Crying. When my husband and I were watching the MasterChef final, I asked him whether tears were now an essential condiment of the culinary competition but he was too misty-eyed to answer. Same goes for The Repair Shop . When someone clutches a clapped-out footstool, it feels like the upholsterer is only adjudged to have done a solid job if the recipient blubs on seeing it freshly stuffed.

As for talent shows, they’ve long been awash. Recently, I caught a bit of BGT. The Barnsley Youth Choir had barely sang a few bars of ‘Fix You’ before the audience fell apart. And while I only saw a few segments of the last series of Strictly , there seemed to be as much weeping as waltzing. Made me think of the original Come Dancing when the full extent of personal info revealed was that the formation team from Penge had sewn every sequin on by hand. At this, nobody cried.

Don’t get me wrong. I do my fair share of sobbing. I dissolve during charity videos and special moments in dramas, like when David and Patrick got together in Schitt’s Creek . And when the world and my worries get the better of me, a good cry, shoulders heaving, offers a real sense of release (although I’m not crazy about my post-cry face because unlike a Man Ray image, my eyes resemble two uncooked chipolatas). But goodness me, light entertainment is relentlessly lachrymose. We’re now at a place where baking a faultless Victoria sandwich or f***ing up a foxtrot can warrant a torrent of tears. Surely it can’t be the spongeyness of the sponge or a fleeting misstep that sets them off. More likely, it’s the pressure cooker existence of the reality show, where emotions are expected, nay encouraged, to bubble over.

Certainly our collective stiff upper lip is wobbling ever more liberally, especially on social media, and I’m not talking about Snapchat’s now crazily popular crying filter that makes anyone’s face in a video grimace and gurn so they appear their pipes are about to burst - apparently people are laughing at this until they, well, cry. There’s been a flood of crying selfies (think Bella Hadid’s shots of snottiness and wretchedness) many posted to express authenticity and turn the tide of feeling obliged to make one’s online life look tickety-boo when, in reality, you might feel lonely and shit – although I can’t help but wonder whether too much social media might be part of the problem in the first place.

There’s no denying crying can be good for you. Apart being a signal to elicit support, it can self-soothe, releasing feel-good oxytocin and endorphins. In fact, some studies suggest repressive coping (ie bottling things up) can be bad for your health. Henry Maudsley, a pioneering 19th century psychiatrist, pronounced that ‘The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep’. Or as my gran used to tell me as a child, ‘Better out than in’. Mind you, I rarely saw the adults in my life cry. They would usually attempt to conceal tears or let it all hang out behind closed doors.

That’s changing. Even TV news reporters and presenters, renowned for their composure, are now revealing more emotion. And when they do, below-the-line debates ensue, opinions falling into two camps – either it’s deemed inappropriate or understandable and relatable. Interestingly, new scientific research has found that when criers are presented as weeping within a context of honesty, their competency rating increases. Will we eventually reach a point where if we’re talking about, or witnessing, something extremely moving, we might be judged in a negative light if we don’t cry?

For me, paradoxically, the more serious or heart breaking a situation, the less I blub. Tragic news stories make me freeze with shock. Subdue me into silence. And at my Dad’s funeral, as the sole organiser desperately wanting it to go right, I didn’t break down at all. Yet recently, at London Children’s Ballet’s production of Anne of Green Gables, when Matthew Cuthbert kicked the bucket and little skippity Anne (with red plaits of the kind I used to sport) sat by his body, tears cascaded down my cheeks.

Was I crying for Matthew (portrayed rather splendidly by a 17 year old)? Of course not. It was simply that as I followed a sentimental story in a darkened theatre, it allowed me to acknowledge the big, sad moments in my own life. And maybe that’s what art and entertainment give people the chance to do. Go lefty loosey and open the taps. That said, I draw the line at Simon Cowell pointing to his eyes with emotion after being reacquainted on stage with the Teletubbies. That made me want to weep. But not in a good way.

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/06/23/bring-back-good-old-days-when-people-didnt-cry-tv

Screen Idle

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 10:19:14 GMT

The madness of social media

Turbulence on a plane. A dancing woman letting her not inconsiderable bare belly jump to the beat. Someone demonstrating how to roll a guest towel really neatly. Celebrities ageing before your eyes. Surgically gloved hands popping a spot. A patient in palliative care sharing her thoughts and fears. A hamster running with a knife. Prince Harry coming through a door. Just a smattering of the videos I scrolled through when I recently signed up to TikTok, around the same time Boris Johnson launched @10downingstreet on the video sharing social media platform.

Why did Johnson do it? Presumably to engage with the youth. Why did I do it given I’m 60 and not the target market? Well, as a writer I felt I should check it out after a friend remarked as an indicator of what other generations were up to, it was an eye-opener. I then stumbled upon new research that declared the over-60s are getting in on the TikTok act too in an attempt to defy ageist stereotypes. Hence I figured I would scan the app and give any vaguely interested or bemused mature types a quick rundown of how it works and what they weren’t missing. After all, while the metaverse might be beyond me, how hard could it be to cast my eye over a few cute cockapoos and gyrating nurses?

Turns out quite hard because a) I found myself in a digital landscape I could neither understand nor navigate and b) it felt akin to slowing down to gawp at a collision or reach for another sweet, even though I hadn’t finished chewing the first. Because as soon as I joined, I could swipe endless, seemingly random videos. The effect resembled a sequence in a sci-fi movie where someone’s brain is being drained and the director stitches together a speeded up montage of the character’s most meaningful/meaningless memories. And make no mistake, when you start watching TikTok, life can pass you by.

It has more than a billion users spending an average of 52 minutes a day on the platform, six per cent devoting more than ten hours a week, another 11 per cent, five to ten, according to statista.com I mean. You can read Orwell’s 1984 in just under six. Even War and Peace only takes about 37. Still, I guess if you did that, you wouldn’t learn about life changing salads, the viral dance moves to Tainted Love or how people interpreted the creative challenge of pretending to be tumbleweed.

As a late adopter of social media and a non-techy person (I’ve only ever used Instagram and I avoided that for nigh on a decade) the first thing I gleaned about TikTok is that your feed isn’t solely anchored in who you follow. Instead, it uses sophisticated AI jiggery-pokery that interprets subtle clues when you scroll – how long you watch and what you share. Have I got that right? (Answers on a postcard). I’m guessing it’s a bit like a digital mixologist, tailoring your dopamine cocktail the more frequently you sit at the bar.

As with all social media, there lurks many a psychological trip hazard, which is why TikTok recalibrated its algorithm to avoid leading viewers too far down rabbit holes – subjects such as extreme diets or loneliness – adding videos that diversified what is served up. But my general concern is how the Everests of ‘stuff’ that hit us every day, from the super-serious to the superficial, are affecting us collectively? Seems to me evolution hasn’t had time to limber up the human brain to sensibly process, prioritise and evaluate it all. And when I think of the kinds of material children get to see these days, I’m bloody glad when I was a kid I mainly played Kick the Can and watched The Waltons .

Of course, there’s interesting content on there. I started following Steven Bartlett, the Royal Opera House and National Geographic. And there’s expert insight on everything from crafting to golf. And while some YouTubers don’t get to their main point for ages, here, info delivery is swifter. Another draw is the ease of video creation. You can add sound, captions and transitions, allowing you to star, direct, write the feem toon and sing the feem toon.

So am I a geriatric TikTok convert? No. It’s basically one more thing about the modern world that makes me want to lie in a darkened room and listen to Chopin’s Berceuse in D flat major. But in order to complete my personal foray, I felt honour-bound to stick my head above the voyeurs’ parapet and upload my first - and probably last - video. It’s on @Janmasters11 and it’s entitled a ‘60 year old woman having a turn’. Numbers of likes at the last count? 41. Cue tumbleweed.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/0/boomers-like-shouldnt-knock-tiktok-tried

The Writing's on the Wall

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 10:19:13 GMT

Pick up your pen, before it’s too late

I type like a demon, yet give me a greeting card to write and I’m highly likely to make a mistake. I’ll transpose two characters or make an ‘o’ look like an ‘a’ and have to fudge it. If I really cock up, I might write ‘oops’ above the error. Not that my handwriting has ever been particularly neat since scribbling at college and as a journalist, but this isn’t a neatness issue. It’s because I handwrite so little and use keyboards so much, putting pen to paper feels rather awkward for my QWERTY-trained fingertips. Given younger generations have grown up with smartphones and social media, using or seeing very little cursive script during their day, is the writing on the wall for, well, writing?

Possibly. Exam regulator Ofqual has announced it’s exploring a ‘pens down’, online approach to GCSEs and A levels. However, some research suggests it might be a mistake to let it slide from schoolwork entirely. In one study, when students took notes on a laptop they tended to type everything verbatim while those taking notes by hand were forced to be more selective, enabling them to understand the material more effectively and remember it better. Another study looked at people filling out a detailed schedule, some inputting the info digitally, others using a notebook. For this kind of task, handwriting not only proved faster and more accurate, the process also activated multiple brain regions associated with memory more robustly.

Science aside, there is something rather special about seeing someone’s thoughts set down in their own hand. I hadn’t spoken in aeons to one school friend who’s lived in the US all her adult life – not until she reconnected with me after reading this column from her Washington base. While she hailed the wonders of digital communication that had allowed us to leap decades of radio silence in a few quick clicks, she also talked movingly about the letters we used to swap as young teenagers when she’d left the English countryside for New York. How they were a lifeline. A link to home. One of her other UK friends, who corresponded with her for longer than me, has kept all their missives. They plan to meet when they’re old to read them all and relive their early angst, amours and adventures.

It's almost as though a person’s spirit exists in their handwriting, their personality intrinsically linked to those strokes on a page. The style decisions they’ve made. Whether their a’s are round like apples or brisk and slim. Whether their writing is contained and economical or showy with a flourish. Writing is as individual as a fingerprint. And it’s still lovely to receive a handwritten envelope – am I the only one who stares at any that come in, not opening them until I’ve managed to put a name to the script?

My friend from America also told me that now her mother has passed away, seeing her handwriting feels especially important. I get that. Whenever I find something my parents have written, however humdrum, the effect is heart-warming. And in the loft nestles a small trunk of letters that my Mum and Dad swapped when Dad was a young lad on a minesweeper during the war and based in India. The paper is so light, so translucent, it’s as if they are written on butterfly wings that flew back and forth across the ocean between them. Whispers on the air through the storms of battle.

My Dad, who left school at 14, later taught himself to write copperplate, which has a decidedly Dickensian appearance. He used it throughout his life, even if he was simply writing a bet on the back of a fag packet. ‘Thin up, thick down,’ he used to say. I’ve just watched a YouTube video of real-time copperplate calligraphy and it’s almost meditative. Even the sound is soothing. Indeed, Monblanc puts each of its iconic Meisterstuck pens through a series of rigorous quality checks, the last requiring experts to listen to the sound the nib makes on paper, with only those deemed smooth, not scratchy, passing the test.

So what will my generation, and those much younger, leave behind that’s handwritten? Not a lot. We may have composed millions of emails and trillions of social posts, but there will be very little of our imprint on a page. Let’s face it, when I’m dead and gone, my WhatsApp group chats with Fight Klub and Purple Bricks aren’t exactly going to tug the heartstrings. Maybe, then, I should consider committing pen to paper on special occasions or to record key memories. Inscribe thoughts within a beautiful leather book. Take my time so I don’t mess it up and speak from the heart. Something that has a little more gravitas than a line of emojis with gritted teeth. Lol.

Signature Style

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 28 May 2022 10:19:25 GMT

It's all in the mix

Fashion tips aimed at those of us in our 50s and 60s usually provide pertinent advice on the value of tailoring and the necessity of owning a properly fitting bra (which I’ve singularly failed to ever possess). But I don’t often hear this kind of encouragement; that while you may have been a dedicated follower of fashion in your youth, being older is a brilliant time to use it to express the person you’ve become. Such a sense of liberation is often lacking.

There seems to be a cultural expectation that by 60, you’re mainly looking for ways to either conceal your age or look elegantly presentable despite it. I get that to some extent. With my increasingly scraggy neck, a number of necklines are no-nos, and when I catch sight of my arms, weirdly I appear to be wearing my Mum’s. But I would love it if credos for camouflage were balanced by the notion that older women might also like to dress creatively, charismatically, individually, dramatically and joyfully, with size, shape and age, no barrier to fashion and flair.

Look at Iris Apfel…and when you see her, you can’t help but look. The American interior designer known for her eclectic, theatrical love of clothes is 100 and has recently collaborated on a line with H&M. Whatever you think of her flamboyance, in the face of this info, who’d dare decree the time to start toning down your style is half a century earlier?

I don’t pretend to be an expert but as lots of readers have been enquiring about items I wear, many of which are years old (the fair isle and cable knits) or inexpensive (the retro print skirt and vintage satin ankle boots, £1.50 and £15 respectively from eBay), here’s my two pennies’ worth. Firstly, scare and dare yourself a little – like when I plonked a yellow fedora with turquoise trim on my head. Turned out to be my favourite hat, flagging my sartorial quest is not yet invisibility.

There are plenty of celebs who offer inspiration, from Helen Mirren’s elegance to Carolina Herrera’s unfailing ability to work a white shirt. I love building signature looks every so often, focusing on interesting yet reliable pieces that neither render you silly nor sombre. One that’s worked for me over the last decade has been the tulle skirt of a graceful length. However, I only stocked up once I’d found a version that laid flat over my hips, rejecting plenty that puffed out from my waist and made me look like an angry, aged fairy in a life-size jewellery box. The lesson? No matter how much you’re drawn to a look, persevere to find the example that fits and flatters you (and never be afraid to size up for a looser, lower-slung fit). If you’re having to convince yourself something will do when actually, it’s not right, don’t buy it. You’ll never wear it.

I’m also a fan of contrasts. Think partnering gossamer net skirts with hunky, chunky sweaters and rugged boots or old-fashioned plimsoles – if you put on a pretty-pretty top and court shoes you’re into mother-of-the-bride territory. So, in the privacy of your own home, I say try on clashes. Mix textures. Mingle styles. Let high-end pieces rub shoulder with budget buys. Throw traditional rules to the winds, just to see if an unlikely pairing delivers an off-kilter charm.

I also like extremes. I don’t mean go crazy for crazy’s sake. Just jump one way or the other, for example, super-plain or intricately embellished. Eschew ho-hum prints, as well as hemlines and jumper lengths that hover in the hinterland of half-heartedness. Same with colour. For years, I’ve been colour blocking. Nothing new there. But try taking it to the limit. For a while, one of my signatures was a figure-hugging red lace dress that I wore with a red ribbon sash, red heels and here’s the important part, red opaque tights. Had I bottled it with black or neutral tights, the whole thing would have lacked any elegance. As it was, this statement often stood me in good stead. When my waist thickened, I swapped short for long and clingy for sweeping. Enter a silk maxi skirt, cardi, scarf and boots, again all in scarlet.

A last thought. To feel fashionable, sometimes it’s worth bucking trends. I learnt this in the 80s, which was all about colour, frills, bagginess and big-time denim. In a sea of jeans, I picked up a few pairs of 1960s’ ex-hire, black ski pants from a bargain bin in a sports shop. I wore them casually but also to uni balls with an officer’s mess jacket. The look couldn’t have been more at odds with the voluminous, metallic ‘oven-ready’ ball dresses of the day. Apfel describes looking like the herd as ‘unfashion’. She proves that can still hold true later in life.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/refuse-wear-society-says-should-60

Picture This

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 21 May 2022 10:19:14 GMT

Just don’t take a photo of your breakfast

There she was, in a sea of people holding their mobiles aloft, one old lady sans smartphone, leaning on a barrier as actors arrived at a premiere, watching them with her own eyes. She stood out not just because she was behaving differently but also because she looked the most damn sensible. I mean if Martians had landed, they’d have assumed all humans, except for this special lady, were only able to view their surroundings via a screen in front of their faces. Incredible to think that in only a few of our Earth years, taking photos has, for many, become a compulsion. An addiction. A fetish.

According to photutorial.com, it’s estimated worldwide, 54,400 photos are taken every second. That’s 4.7 billion a day and 1.72 trillion a year, a large percentage of them, people’s lunches. I rarely take food pics even though in some situations, it’s almost a snub if you don’t. If you’re getting stuck into salmon en croute rather than snapping it, the waiter is liable to think something about your supper’s amiss.

However, I’m guilty of taking way too many pictures of other stuff: my dog whenever she looks cute (which is all the time); flowers in different stages of unfurling; studies of the mundanity of life that I kid myself have a Martin Parr-esque irony. Worse, I rarely delete any, so they sit on ‘The Cloud’. Although it’s not a cloud is it? The world’s multitudinous stash of pouts, pooches, pancakes and people’s privates reside in thwacking great server farms.

I also have a passion for using a proper camera with lenses of the type you see on the baseline at Wimbledon. These are for capturing magnificent spectacles on magical trips: elephants at dusk; monolithic icebergs; mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But here’s the thing - if these moments are so significant, have I made them less so by viewing them entirely through a lens? I’ve been to Antarctica twice and I don’t think I’ve ever watched a whale flip its fluke without simultaneously pressing the shutter button. I now have to ask myself whether simply watching its magnificence would have made a better memory than digitally documenting it.

Maybe it was easier to maintain a sensible balance when we had to eke out 24 or 36 frames of film over a fortnight. You had to be very sure you wanted that picture of dad in the stocks at Blackgang Chine because once taken, there was no going back. You had to wind the film on. What’s more, you certainly didn’t repeat that pose the following year. No, come the next Isle of Wight holiday, we nixed the stocks and instead, Dad got me to point at a lighthouse. Scintillating? No. But then again, had anyone suggested we take a photo of half a grapefruit at breakfast, we’d have thought them stark staring bonkers.

Gratification was also delayed. Not only did film have to be developed, we used to post ours off and await its return. Results were hit and miss. Once, we received a sorry envelope where every frame had a wide orange streak down one side. Light leaks, apparently. Lol, I cut the affected bits off with scissors and put them in the album anyway.

Now that was another serious affair. Our albums had pages that were covered in multiple thin lines of a tacky substance and when you peeled back the transparent overlay to position your photos, it made a deeply satisfying sucking sound. The only trouble was, once some years had elapsed and you fetched the album from the sideboard, the horizontal gluey lines had gone brown, as had the photographs themselves. The 70s may have been an explosion of disco-licious colour but all my archive material is in Edwardian sepia.

So back to the future. I’ve decided now is the time to change my rules of photographic engagement. Firstly, I hereby vow to delete thousands of shots on my phone that are of no creative or documentary value. And before I whip out my phone to, say, take another picture of an interesting tree, I shall ask myself, ‘Would I put it in a sticky album?’. If the answer is ‘no’, move on.

On the other hand, if I’m at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or witnessing herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains, the camera will be on burst mode. But I will take a breath too. To truly watch the scene. To actually live it. And I will honour the pictures I do take. Rather than simply let them gather digital dust, I’ve already started ordering printed photo books, to have and to hold. Because I still think there’s something special about images you can touch. Like the dogeared one of my dad at Blackgang Chine. A stock shot that’s irreplaceable.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/stop-looking-life-smartphone-lens

Shut Up and Dance

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 14 May 2022 10:19:27 GMT

From ballet to ballroom, dance is a good move

One by one, we find a place at the barre. Usually the same place. Creatures of habit. We wriggle our feet into ballet shoes (not tippy-toe pointe shoes but canvas or leather flats). Some students embark on serious stretching. I touch my toes, then chat. Welcome to my adult ballet class, one of my favourite ways to exercise and unwind.

‘General level’ is how the lesson is billed, which means it’s for mixed abilities. But that’s not the only thing that varies. We’re all different shapes, sizes and ages. Granted, I’m at the older end of the scale, but no one gives age a second thought (it’s not like we’re striving for stardom at the Opera House). And oh, how I love the absolute freedom to move across the expanse of a studio floor. To interpret music with movement. To dance in space and in sync with others. These are the moments when my rampant anxiety seems to fade, exiting stage left.

I’ve dipped in and out of ballet all my life and lessons still run to much the same format they did when I was six years old attending classes over the Co-op, run by the formidable Mrs Gray, accompanied by Mrs Bungard on the ivories. Each year, an examiner would descend from the Royal Academy of Dance, sit at a spindly table, pen poised, inviting entrants into the examination room by ringing a small hand bell. God, that bell. To us quivering fairies it had the ominous gravitas of the gong at the start of a Rank feature film.

I did terribly well at RAD exams but I chucked in the towel in my early teens when Mrs Gray decamped to the church hall, which meant the boys from the fifth form could peer through the windows and take the mickey. I was silly to have packed it in. Message to the young; don’t make life choices based on the sniggerings of school boys.

Now, I find ballet classes akin to meditation. Firstly, because the music, whether it’s pre-recorded or played live by a pianist, is so utterly spirit-lifting - it might be Tchaikovsky, it might be a classical take on the Flintstones, but it’s a fast ticket out of reality. Secondly, by the very nature of the exercises, you have to put your worries to one side and concentrate. Hard. Because while individual steps correspond to a learned universal language, the order in which the teacher links them alters every time. All you get is a quick demo. An even faster recap. And you’re on. Daunting, but superb training for your memory.

In fact, it’s been found dancing – for example, ballroom, Latin or salsa – can raise mood, increase flexibility and also support cognition in healthy older adults. The multisensory stimulation and social interaction, coupled with learning new sequences of movements, perhaps while anticipating and reacting to cues from a partner, can bolster brain health. One landmark study also showed that people over 40 who participated in regular dancing over a decade almost halved their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. For this benefit, you gotta get a bit sweaty and out of breath, though - sitting on the floor for ‘Oops upside your head’ won’t cut it.

Having travelled a lot, I’ve come to realise dance is something humans everywhere are compelled to do. It’s in our DNA. Which is why wherever I’m on a trip, to truly put a finger on the pulse of the place, I seek out the local dance scene. No, I’m not talking hotel foyer shows where every night, a trio duly don a nylon costume and execute some bendy tricks with a ewer balanced on their forehead, before encouraging audience participation (why is it trapped tourists always seem to do the same gyrations, wafting limp arms in no particular rhythmic relationship to their hapless jigging about?). What I’m referring to is feeling the heartbeat of a neighbourhood. For example, in Buenos Aires, me and my husband skip the slick tango shows and seek out the milongas, tango events that rarely get going before midnight and where all ages partner each other.

I wish, as a nation, we danced more. Together. Sure, if you’re young, there are clubs and raves (in my day, the equivalent was the D.I.S.C.O, where we freestyled to I Feel Love by Donna Summer) and yes, dance is increasing in popularity. But for many mature types, the nearest they get is watching Strictly or bopping to Dancing Queen at a wedding reception. I believe more community dancing might contribute to our gross national happiness. I only have to see how much my friend and her husband, who must be their seventies, enjoy Scottish dancing, reeling the night away. They show such stamina, such style, they’re my poster children for the benefits of dance at any age.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/0/power-dance-underestimated-keeps-healthy-anxiety-bay

The Worry of Not Sleeping

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 07 May 2022 10:19:19 GMT

It’s enough to keep you up at night

If there’s ever a thought to keep me awake at night, it’s worrying about not getting enough sleep. Apparently, people age 60 and over are more susceptible to insomnia, one possible reason being their internal circadian clocks are not ticking as efficiently as they once did. In fact, studies suggest that in middle age the average person loses 27 minutes of sleep per night with every passing decade. For me, that amounts to more than two episodes of Schitt’s Creek. Crikey.

The annoying thing is being dog-tired doesn’t automatically equate to immediate slumber. I’ve never found wafting lavender or sipping herbal tisanes useful. One thing that helps, however, is listening to voices at low volume, particularly soporific if I can’t understand the lingo. Enter Inspector Montalbano . Aah, that lilting Italian accent. I can rest easy, sure in the knowledge Salvo is solving the case. I’m sure the cast would be delighted to learn their creative endeavours are being used to cure my insomnia. Scusa commissario. Buona notte.

I’ve recently discovered myriad recordings of ambient sound and ‘white noise’ on YouTube; you can tune into ten hours’ of stormy weather, highway traffic in a tunnel, frogs and crickets or a babbling brook – the last one just makes me want to pee. There are also soundscapes of city life. As I live in London, this, I don’t need. It seems whenever I’m in a deliciously deep sleep, two blokes walking in whispering distance come down the road chatting so loudly, their conversation penetrates the double glazing. Then there’s the car driver whose music is so booming, the Mazda is basically a Marshall amp on wheels.

‘Sleep hygiene’ is the phrase now used in relation to factors that can be adjusted so you kip better. At first, I thought it referred to how often you washed your sheets. Got to say, though, freshly ironed bedlinen does help. That’s the best thing about a hotel room. Although I don’t understand the tea towel on the floor thing. Nor the one-size-fits-no-one slippers that turn your walk into a shuffle. They might as well say on the turndown card, ‘Enjoy your stay and please trip up with our compliments’.

I do think it can be beneficial to make the room completely dark. At long last, I’ve come to fully appreciate the finer points of the pelmet. Particularly since our council has replaced old-fashioned lampposts with illumination straight out of the opening credits of Sportsnight with Coleman (you have to be at least my age to get that reference – if you’re not, imagine throwing the switch on stadium floodlights to the crescendo of a catchy tune and you’ve got the picture). Trouble is now I can’t bear any light. Even a tiny red dot of a DVD player drives me to distraction.

Another problem I have is called ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’. If I do nod off quickly, I inevitably wake at 2am and within seconds, my google brain is responding to the burning question of the night, ‘What have I got to worry about?’. With my personal search engine whirring, it usually comes up with one answer. Plenty. It starts with something I mustn’t forget to do, so I face the dilemma of whether I concentrate on remembering, which wakes me up even more, or jotting it down. Emailing myself, however, is a disaster because I can’t ignore any unread messages. Digital devices have a lot to answer for. We’ve raised them to the status of bedside life support machines.

By this time, my worries are gaining traction, each scenario I ponder, more scary than the last. Come 2.45am, I’ve lived through more drama than the Christmas edition of EastEnders . Sometimes, though, I manage to distract myself by rehearsing what I could say in a forthcoming meeting should the other person become totally unreasonable, a turn of events that springs entirely from my imagination. Or even less helpful, I go over what I could have said in an argument that took place five years ago.

My final move is to bring gratitude into play. I tell myself if I were on a plane right now, feet wedged between the window and front seat, kneecap jammed against the armrest, teeth still tasting of red wine and coq au vin, I would kill for this glorious, spacious bed. But nope. I continue to be as picky as a pea-detecting princess - until it’s twenty minutes away from the alarm going off, by which time I’m finally out cold.

The other night, as a last resort, I googled sleepfoundation.org. Instantly, a pop-up window slid onto the screen. It was a competition to win a mattress – now that’s a great prize, providing of course, you haven’t got insomnia. They even show the number of entries as they ratchet up. I guess I could simply count those until I…

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/insomnia-has-causing-anxiety-life-finally-

found-cure

Modern Life Is Rubbish

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 10:19:16 GMT

Why weak litter policies should go in the bin

A damaged suitcase, a deflated paddling pool, a dirty pair of trainers, a defective printer. No, not items on the conveyor belt of a dystopian version of The Generation Game. Detritus I’ve seen on the pavements where I live, nestling with the ubiquitous cans and takeaways (occasionally, people thoughtfully place these on my wall so I can deal with their sauce-smeared wrappers). The gutters are awash with masks and fag ends floating downstream to block the drains. In the park, I’ve noticed discarded little cannisters – apparently, they house nitrous oxide (laughing gas). And recently, I watched my dog hurtle towards what turned out to be a heavily soiled pair of boxer shorts. I mean…

According to Keep Britain Tidy, more than two million pieces of litter are dropped every day in the UK. When it comes to items bigger than crisp packets, out-of-town fly-tippers are often blamed. But that can’t be the whole story. People don’t drive from Wokingham to West London to leave a broken brolly down an alleyway (sorry Wokingham, random selection). These one-off items must be left by individuals who simply can’t be bothered to take responsibility for stuff they no longer want or need.

As for this new ‘kindness’ trend of putting unwanted belongings in random places so people can help themselves, who wants a rained-drenched old bath mat and a soaking wet jigsaw puzzle? Take what’s worthy to a charity shop. And don’t dump it outside out of hours. I once saw a passerby tip freshly laundered baby clothes from the charity’s doorway onto the pavement, pick out a few pieces and leave the rest scattered.

Our streets never used to look like this. My dad wouldn’t have even dropped a half-sucked lozenge. Old news footage and vintage dramas attest to this. Even when I was a child in the suburbs, I don’t’ remember this much rubbish. Occasionally, you’d find a wounded cassette tape, its guts spilling out, awaiting a pencil to spool it back in. But the only genuinely forensically fascinating prize was the dead hedgehog. I distinctly remember one that lay on Queen Mary’s Drive for the summer. Every day, kids watched its slow and disgusting decay, relishing the process the more grisly it became. When the maggots arrived, there was dancing in the streets. The smell of roadkill baking on tarmac was an aroma never to be forgotten.

In any discussion about litter, you’ll doubtless hear lack of government funding is to blame or it’s the council’s fault for not clearing it fast enough. I’d agree that it’s partly the council’s fault…for picking it up too quickly when all this started, encouraging more to be dumped, rather than tackling why people thought they could do it in the first place. I know, I know, up goes the cry that prosecutions are made and you can’t catch everyone. But councils have become uncommonly agile when monitoring motoring misdemeanours. Park your car two inches over a line or drive a minute too late into a restricted zone and you’ll swiftly feel the full weight of the law. No ifs or buts. But leave a mattress or fridge-freezer on the corner and more than likely, nada.

I looked at the government website on litter. It wrestles with the problem of measuring it, deliberating whether to count it by weight, number of items or size. They’re really scratching their heads on this one. Good grief. Who cares how you measure it? Just say there’s too much and it shouldn’t be there. And while it’s not the worst misdemeanour, research shows a littered environment contributes to escalating crime, with people feeling less safe in such areas.

One reason that’s given for more items being left is that for struggling households, it’s too expensive to have them taken away. But surely the council could help those in genuine need? Or friends in the neighbourhood could come together, maybe do a single tip run. Perhaps younger generations who are so up on recycling and sustainability would be keen to assist. Although I wonder if they’re all so squeaky clean judging by the aftermath of the Reading Festival that resembled a tip, complete with abandoned tents.

Keep Britain tidy goes into detail about the public bodies legally responsible for keeping land litter-free. I’ll tell you who’s responsible. EVERYONE. And if that sank in properly, taxpayers wouldn’t be spending over £1 billion a year to clear it up. The truth is litter isn’t about funding. It’s about the prevailing culture. And in this respect, ours has changed. For the worse. When I was on the bullet train travelling from Kyoto, I was surprised to see passengers unpack mini banquets. Bento boxes abounded. But by the time that train hit the buffers at Tokyo, not one piece of rubbish was left. A demonstration it is possible.

Coming Of Age

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 10:19:24 GMT

Will boomers grow old disgracefully?

When my dad died, it was sudden. Heart attack. No warning. When time had passed and I was trying to fill Dad’s shoes, my beloved, heartbroken mum stared at the floor and whispered, ‘We’re in a right pickle, aren’t we?’. I didn’t understand, so she elaborated; ‘How am I going to pay for everything?’. I explained she was fine financially (she lived frugally anyway). But what she meant was she’d never dealt with a bank, an insurance company, the gas, electricity, BT or TV licensing. My dad had done it all.

There was a flipside. When I was little, on the rare occasion my mum left me and dad alone, the only thing he could cook for lunch and dinner was coconut ice. Mind you, I can still taste that sugary, knobbly goo, so in terms of memorable feasts, fair play to him.

While not all elderly people age in the same way, I’ve seen plenty whose decline, if not always as dramatic, resembled my mum’s. Until she passed away in her late 80s, her world shrank dramatically. I tried so very hard to encourage her but she shied away from simple challenges. Some of my friends looking on predicted that when we got old, we’d likely be the same.

I’m not so sure. For a start, that traditional lifelong division of labour often meant when one partner died, the other couldn’t cope. In contrast, most of us have experienced living solo. It was no longer the norm to go from parental to marital home. After uni, I shared with groups of friends and in my thirties, I did a long, long stint alone. Indeed, the number of single occupied households in the UK is on the rise. Now I’m not saying my generation got the balance right. Far from it! But it did help me learn to handle a stopcock. And much, much more.

Of course, in 20 years’ time, many of us mature types don’t know whether we’ll have enough funds or there’ll be enough care resources to go round. We don’t know whether we’ll be infirm or suffer dementia. But the majority of boomers, by sheer numbers, are almost certain to redefine old age, partly because even if we grumble at our youth-centric culture, we still tend to align ourselves with a younger generation than ourselves. Unlike my parents who segued seamlessly into each decade in both dress and deed, we’ve been dragging our youth around with us all our lives. And we’re reluctant to let go. Put it this way, I can’t see my friends, if they’re still compos mentis, lining an old folks’ common room, doing as they’re told.

Even the fact we’re working longer, stretches middle age. And although we came late to the digital party, we’re closing that gap. Just look at daytime TV. Crammed with ads for online dating sites for the over 50s. Granted, they mingle with those for easy-access showers but we’ve confused the marketing execs you see – they can’t decide whether to help us bathe or bonk.

Extensive travel has shaped us too. At any one moment I can recall elephants in the African bush, chaotic roundabouts in Delhi, icebergs in the Arctic. Sounds a cliché but visiting other lands and cultures has widened my horizons. So even when my world shrinks, I’ll be starting from a considerably bigger base.

We’re also more demanding. Perhaps because boomers have long been indulged – we’ve never known the hardships my parents endured - we expect more from life. And we’re less intimidated too. A medical white coat doesn’t make my mind go blank or render me acquiescent. No, I’m straight onto Dr Google so I can pinion the poor consultant with scalpel-sharp questions.

And in simple terms, we won’t wear an old people’s uniform. Because we have no set look now. Take hairstyles. Decades ago, by 60, women had a perm. End of. Unless you were posh, in which case you cut it short. Today, anything goes. I have long hair and have no intention of cutting it yet. And while I find lilac and green streaks a rather obvious rebellion, I applaud the individuality. I’d rather be considered flamboyant than invisible.

So here’s how I imagine my geriatric self, providing I still retain my marbles. If my husband dies first I’m more likely to be travelling to Varanasi to scatter his ashes than working up the courage to cancel his standing orders. I’ll wear red when I’m out and kimonos when inside. And vintage shoes. When I’m in hospital, propped up in bed talking tablets, I’ll be referring to my iPad 29 on which I shall research the drugs they’ve put me on – then message my friends to smuggle in gin. Sure, I’ll probably end up in a right pickle. But it won’t be the same pickle as my mum’s. I hope it will have more bite.

Eau de Melamine

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 10:19:12 GMT

The lost sense of Easter

Such a treat. Such a treasure. The much-anticipated chocolate Easter egg of my childhood. Covered in shiny foil. Falling cleanly in two halves. Hemispheres of heaven, filled with Smarties, Buttons or Tooty Frooties. Sometimes, my dad upped the ante and bought a Dairy Box version with grown-up chocolates inside. And how daring that there was no prescribed way to eat it. That you could dive in freestyle, breaking it as you pleased. Some shards, if they came from the central seam, were thick, while those snapped from the centre of the dome were wafer thin. I thought this confection of contrasts more miraculous than anything Fabergé could have fashioned.

In fact, I considered myself quite the connoisseur. I was never a fan of the Cadbury Creme egg. I know. Radical. Partly because it seemed several degrees sweeter than liquidised candy floss but mainly because the yellow ‘yolk’ didn’t appear to taste any different to the white bit, which I thought was a swizz. I preferred Mackintosh’s Toffee Filled Eggs in a box of eight, each containing the most tongue-tantalising caramel ever invented.

I loved the Easters of yesteryear, mainly because they didn’t start with the appearance of hot cross buns around January 2nd. In those days, the baked treats were simply fruited, spiced and glossy. Now, there’s something of a bunfight going down, with stores trying to outdo each other with outlandish additions. According to one supermarket, that’s because the hot cross bun is ‘having a moment in 2022’. Funny because I thought they’d been having a moment for quite some time, from pagan spring festivals to Christian celebrations. So apologies if I can’t warm to adding chocolate, caramelised onion, cheddar cheese or Marmite to the mix. After all, many people see the simple flour and water strips that overlie the top as a symbol of the crucifixion of Christ. Now, it’s more like a signal for the showstopper round of the Great British Bake Off.

For me, the start of Easter was marked by attending the Palm Sunday service as a young Brownie. I loved being handed that small palm cross because it had a texture quite unlike any other plant that grew in Acacia Avenue. I duly imagined they’d been brought in baskets by donkeys from the Holy Land. Well, certainly somewhere farther afield than Guildford.

These days, lots of us use the Easter break to migrate to exotic climes. My family did much the same. We took our maroon Wolseley to a caravan park in Bognor Regis. We’d pack the car and take buttered Jacobs Cream Crackers for the trip (just about the most crumb-making, thirst-inducing snack you could possible rustle up for a journey). Our seasonal prayer was that the fan belt would hold up for the Chichester Bypass.

Oh the joy of arrival. For there she was, a white and pistachio green caravan. When we opened the door, my nose was greeted with truly one of the most exciting scents of my life. I can almost smell it now. Eau de Melamine, emitting from just about every cheaply constructed interior surface, mingling with mustinessaand baked by the sun in what was essentially an airless tin can. Only now do I realised it was probably formaldehyde.

We paddled in freezing water, feeling the waves wash over our toes then tugging sand back beneath our feet. We bought paper flags to stick in sandcastles and windmill on sticks that whirled with a frenzy. Trains passed the caravan site and every morning, my dad would take me to wave to the driver, who always waved back.

In the evenings, we’d visit the onsite club where the children were encouraged to sing ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’, especially if they clearly weren’t happy and had no intention of showing it. Then, when I was older we danced to ‘Tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree’, which I enjoyed, even though I could never understand why the bloke who sang it was called Dawn.

Those Easter holidays always served as a fresh start. When we got back home, our semi seemed positively palatial. You didn’t have to pump a handle to flush the loo. The garden was lush and I knew it would soon be warm enough for the serious fun to begin…jumping through the sprinkler in a swimming costume.

Even these days, I much prefer Easter to Christmas. You still get time off but gatherings are more casual. There are no presents to buy. No cards to write. Less pressure to enjoy yourself, so you tend to enjoy yourself more. A better chance of sunshine. And if it rains, nature still flutters its daffodil flags like seasonal bunting. But oh, what I’d give for a Mackintosh’s toffee egg right now. Not too soft. Not too hard. Like most simple pleasures, just right.

The Beauty of Youth

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 10:19:27 GMT

Just don’t say Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy

Red hair. Pale skin. Academically smart. Uh oh. In terms of desirability in my teens, this wasn’t a good mix. I remember being in a biology class on genetics and because my hair colour indicated a double recessive gene, I became the subject of scientific discussion - but not before the teacher doublechecked no tinting had taken place. Instantly, a fellow pupil piped up, “Oh come on Sir, as if anyone would actually dye their hair that colour”. Cue mass hilarity.

It was also a time before we’d fully grasped the necessity of sun protection. Everyone coveted a deep, dark mahogany tan. With my Celtic complexion, when I stood next to friends and their families, I looked like the resident ghost. Felt nearly as invisible too. Until the freckles appeared and I wanted to hide, an ugly duckling sensitivity that I never really shook off my whole adult life. Perhaps that’s why I became a beauty editor at the start of my magazine career, loving all the lotions and potions. The promise of change.

So a couple of weeks ago, when I came across some 35mm transparencies of me in my twenties with long Pre-Raphaelite hair and creamy skin, I was shocked. Because if I say so myself, I looked rather (…she hesitates to articulate this) lovely. I posted these archive images on Instagram. Compliments flooded in. Sizzling emojis flashed. It was pure indulgence, of course. That part of me wanting to show the world I wasn’t as bad as I’d always thought. Dammit, if only I’d realised at the time.

But then if only all young people realised they are beautiful in the present moment. Because being virtually geriatric myself, I can now see youth, at its very essence, is sublime. You don’t have to have a face drawn to the golden ratio. Simply being in possession of bounce-back skin or sparkly eyes or supple limbs or a smooth neck or sheer youthful energy, enthusiasm and exuberance gives you a magical kind of magnetism.

Which is why I feel sad that many (often women) use dramatic facial filters and editing apps until all their selfies display about as much variation as a row of shop mannequins. I can only guess it comes from the pressure of constantly seeing themselves on screen - perhaps more than they see themselves in the mirror. They seem to end up with the same-shaped brows and lips. Why do already-gorgeous young women get their lips filled? Come to that, why do old women get their lips filled? I’m not anti ‘tweakments’. Far from it. I have no problem with opting for subtle-if-they’re-safe improvements. But serious pillow lips on a senior just draws attention to your age.

Naturally, there are reasons specific looks are prized at certain times. In social anthropological terms, prevailing ideals of beauty embody what the culture holds dear. Witness the tan. It only became fashionable when Coco Chanel reinvented it as a visible sign you travelled. Centuries before, it said you lived an outdoor life rooted in serfdom and turnip farming.

Interestingly, alongside filters and fillers, an alternative beauty trend has gained traction. That of the distinctive individual. A reflection of the drive to champion difference. In general, I thoroughly applaud the inclusiveness of this narrative. I remember as a beauty editor in the 90s walking past Liberty’s windows and seeing a Nars makeup campaign with portraits of a young South Sudanese-British model, Alek Wek alongside Karen Elson with her carrot hair and pale brows. My heart leapt for joy. It signified a step away from the cookie cutter, cheerleader look that had held court for so long.

But recently, some beauty ads have pushed individuality to such an extent, there’s the suggestion unconventional looks are somehow superior to those that are more commonplace. Which is an irony. Instead of saying it’s perfectly cool to be different, it’s almost saying to be cool, you need to be different. I’m talking about the Marc Jacobs ad where the models keep repeating the same word…no, not Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, punch-the-TV Daisy. It’s the one where they say ‘Perfect’ over and over. A chorus line of arresting models ramming home the message they’re perfect as they are.

I’m assuming there was a casting for this. That they were carefully selected. Which renders the thrust of the ad a wee bit disingenuous. If they had been gathered completely randomly – say if the first 40 youngsters to emerge from a subway station were approached and signed, regardless of who they were and what they looked like, that would have been more representative of the theme. Then there’s the whole concept of being perfect. Surely, none of us are. And that’s ok. Wouldn’t that assertion be a more ground-breaking message? Certainly, more of a comfort.

Confidence Tricks

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 10:19:23 GMT

The art of feeling less bloody nervous

Apparently, throughout life, levels of confidence typically follow a bell curve, rising during late teens, peaking in middle age and declining after 60. I tell you straight, if you plotted mine, the pattern would look more like a polygraph test in a thriller. A jittery, volatile scribble. Up, down, up, down, a brief lofty peak then a plunge to the depths.

I agree that in youth, one is often optimistically buoyant about one’s capabilities. Donkey’s years ago, when I was a finalist in British Vogue’s annual talent contest, Anna Wintour, who had taken over as editor, sat next to me for one course of a tortuous finalists’ lunch. As I complimented her on some aspect of the magazine, she swiftly deflected the praise. My reaction? I elbowed her in an overfamiliar gesture that suggested she could obviously do with some reassurance and encouragement - and I was the person to give it! Was that confidence or absurd naivety? Probably an unseemly, if hilarious, combination of the two.

That said, I was usually pretty timid as a teen. In my first job, during lunchtimes for the first fortnight, I sat in my Mini with a flask of tea because I wasn’t sure anyone would want to share a sandwich. But then I’ve always suffered from anxiety and if there’s one thing that dramatically drains your confidence, it’s the continual internal quaking as you ponder how imperfect you are and what kind of disaster might strike next.

We tend to define confidence in an entirely positive light. But in truth, it’s more about pitching it appropriately. Clearly you don’t want your pilot announcing, ‘And a very good morning from the flight deck. We’re in for some strong crosswinds today but I’m going to give it my best shot and let’s just hope I can make the landing at Heathrow.’ On the flipside, when a candidate in The Apprentice opines he’s going to be bigger than Elon Musk and then can’t flog a dozen bottles of windscreen wash in Deptford, such misplaced confidence is comedy gold.

I know a few mature friends who report losing their confidence as they age, yet others say the opposite – that they finally feel more bold, more comfortable in their own skin. I’m kind of somewhere in the middle. I now accept I can feel gung-ho about some pursuits and considerably less so about others. And that’s OK. For instance, I’m happy to journey with a small band of travellers to stay in a ger (a kind of yurt) in the frigid Altai mountains of Outer Mongolia but if you took me to a luxury hotel in Val d’Isere and asked me to strap skis to my feet, frankly, I can’t envisage any outcome that doesn’t involve medevac.

For years, I used to read about building confidence, strategies that sounded like you could beef it up like biceps at the gym. Advice such as projecting positive affirmations in the mirror and improving your self-talk – repeating that you’re brilliant at what you do and life is becoming a breeze. The trouble is, my self-talk always answered back; ‘You’re brilliant? Well, we know that’s bollocks’. Eventually, I twigged it was better to fully acknowledge my disquiet but dig in regardless and try to get the job done, gradually shaping fear into something more familiar, more manageable. For instance, I used to hate public speaking but now, even though I’m nervous beforehand, I rather enjoy it.

In fact, that’s an interesting example. Because my big breakthrough there came when I realised writing out a lengthy speech and reading it while pretending you weren’t, was not only as dull as ditchwater, it made you look unsure of yourself. So I switched to jotting down headings and then speaking off the top of my head. At my first attempt, I stumbled more than once, cracked a few jokes and asked for forgiveness. At the end, people congratulated me on, wait for it…my confidence. In that moment I discovered if you can be real – even reveal your shortcomings – it’s not only human, it’s engaging.

I’ve also learned to stop chasing confidence for its own sake because there are other aspirations, when pursued with authenticity, that flex your confidence muscles almost as a side effect. Cultivating resilience when life’s a bit rubbish is one. Another is making peace with people with whom you’ve argued, hurt or got off on the wrong foot. Because attempting to build bridges not only requires sincerity – which is the true plinth upon which confidence rests - it involves taking a deep breath and risking being rebuffed. A tiny posy, proffered in person, is now my olive branch of choice. If accepted, often a new and healthier bond happily blossoms. Ironically, then, I’ve found confidence is less about self. It flourishes when its focus is others.

The Big Finish

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 11:19:18 GMT

Spare me from no-fuss funerals

When a form asks me to tick a box adjacent to my age bracket, naturally I now have to scroll way down the list to ‘60 and over’. While it’s disconcerting to see the number of vacant boxes left to fill has diminished to, well, one (dead) I’m even less thrilled about the kind of direct marketing that’s winging its way to my door. Why advertisers think when you turn 60, they’re aiming at someone sucking a Werther’s Original and sharing a footbath with Eammon Holmes, I don’t know. It’s a good job Sweaty Betty sends me brochures. At least they still think I may need something to wear for my drum and bass workouts.

While I’m genuinely grateful to the NHS for the bowel cancer testing kit (although I pity the poor posties who have to handle the return package, surely knowing what lurks within) the most depressing mailshots are those pressing me to finance my own funeral plan pronto, apparently to save my family shelling out any unnecessary funds from the estate I’ve bequeathed them. I don’t even get a free pen.

The latest misery-missive made me pause for thought. It explained how direct cremation works, the kind of funeral made famous by David Bowie, where the deceased is attended to without fuss or fanfare, the ashes duly returned to the next of kin. While I understand this option might be favoured by some who aren’t religious or whose aged relatives couldn’t face the distress, I balked at the suggestions of what mourners could do instead of showing up at a stuffy church to sing How Great Thou Art, one of which was ‘go on a picnic’! Call me old fashioned but I hope I’m remembered in a way that has a touch more gravitas than the ceremonial unwrapping of a cheese and pickle sandwich at Virginia Water.

It wasn’t so long ago that most send-offs were the essence of dour formality, women dabbing eyes under hats, men fiddling with ties, congregations mumbling hymns they only half knew, with everyone’s sights firmly set on a schooner of cream sherry. But funerals have been evolving at a rapid rate. Take one of our local funeral directors. It’s called Exit Here and its blue logo is in a handwritten script on a white background, quite the transformation from the traditional undertaker with its blacked-out windows showcasing a granite vase filled with maroon chrysanths.

Look, I’m all for personalising a funeral, especially when it’s in the tragic shadow of someone dying young. In those dreadful circumstances, you want to see bright colours. To celebrate their spirit, their passions. A stark, dark funeral is too heart-breaking to contemplate.

I even pushed the black-edged envelope a tad for my old Dad. He was a joker, so in his eulogy, I said, ‘He was always the life and soul of the party…even if he hadn’t been invited’. Which was true - he once gate-crashed an event and joined a line-up to shake Prince Philip’s hand. I also took on board his request that at the end of the service, his coffin shouldn’t disappear through curtains like a suitcase at Heathrow. So given he was a jazz aficionado, I hired a saxophonist to stand by him and play Somewhere Over the Rainbow as we filed out.

But how far will funerial boundaries reach? Ok, so we haven’t caught up with Japan where a robot can perform the priestly honours or ashes can be housed in a giant golf ball (I can hear it now; “In the name of the father, the son and into the ‘ole he goes”) but even here, coffins are shaking off the look of a 1990’s fitted kitchen. Sustainable willow varieties are rather lovely. Although personally, I’d pass on a casket that’s covered in Swarovski crystals – reminds me too much of a Lamborghini parked outside Harrods.

And while it’s right and proper music should reflect the deceased tastes, when your choice might be anything from Iron Maiden to Renée and Renato, when does the ceremony stop being a funeral and start becoming, erm, entertainment? When does the British stiff upper lip segue into Britain’s Got Talent? As a horrified Charlotte in Sex and the City said at Miranda’s mother’s funeral when she saw the lairy floral tribute that had been delivered, “Those flowers were supposed to say, ‘We’re so sorry, we love you,’ not ‘You’re dead, let’s disco’.

On balance, I wouldn’t want my funeral to be customised at the expense of customs. So while I hope guests chortle at the antics I got up to, I’d still like a bit of ear-curdling organ music. A hint of musty hymnbooks. And to all the guests, you’re getting a glass of Amontillado whether you like it or not.

Baby Gap

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 11:19:22 GMT

I never had a child... until now

It’s been in the media a lot lately. Menopause. Celebrities are nailing their colours to the let’s-talk-about-it mast, you can tune into chatty, info-packed podcasts on the subject and recently, there was a public consultation as to whether one particular form of HRT should be available via a pharmacist.

A few years back when I was going through menopause, the conversation was nowhere near as newsy and loud, while in my mum’s day, the topic was hardly aired at all. Women would whisper about ‘the change’. Some even mouthed it like Miranda Hart’s sitcom namesake who used to give the silent treatment to the word ‘sex’.

It’s great we’re acknowledging it more openly because it’s a part of life, like reaching any other milestone, especially as for many, it isn’t always an easy journey physically or psychologically. Genuine support and understanding can only help. That said, it would be a mistake to throw a negative net over the entire experience. It can also usher in a sense of freedom. The start of a new chapter.

For me, the first symptom was that my face, without warning, would fire up as if powered by a portable furnace. However, the emotional consequence, although less visible, was every bit as unsettling and that was accepting nature was officially waving the chequered flag on having children. I’d already known as much way before that. In my early 40s, living alone, I’d largely come to terms with being childless. But still, the finality prompted a moment of reflection. Remembering what my younger self had already mourned. That I would never kiss a newborn’s head. Never sew ribbons into ballet shoes or name tags into rugby shirts, help conjugate French verbs or confiscate cheap sweets.

Not that I’d endured hope-crushing rounds of failed IVF. As I far as I knew, I had no fertility issues. My childless state was shaped entirely by circumstance. In my long-term relationships, I just wasn’t with anyone who wanted babies at the same time as me. And I certainly didn’t apply pressure. I got on with earning a living.

So when, at the time, fertility experts wrote in the BMJ that women, in attempting to have it all, were defying nature by delaying motherhood, I wrote an article in reply, acknowledging their valid points but explaining not all attempts to conceive later in life were the direct result of career-oriented deferral strategies. That if having a child is a major life event, often, so is not having one. And for me, my chance for a family had always felt like trying to grasp something underwater that in slow motion, had gradually eluded me before finally slipping away.

Vogue ran the piece, albeit without fanfare. No visuals. No PR push. But the press picked it up. Big time. Then Lorraine Kelly invited me onto her show, as did Sky News. I declined the latter because I had a ticket for the ballet that evening – and thank goodness I didn’t cancel because that’s the night I met my now-husband, who like me, had gone to the performance alone. Kind of poetic, really.

During my 40s, I remember when people asked if I had children and I said ‘no’, the frequent assumption was either my body had let me down or I preferred Prada to Pampers. Without meaning to I’m sure, some pretty unhelpful utterances were delivered, mostly about all the things ‘only a mother could understand’. The really wounding one was that you don’t really know what love is until you have children. On one level, I kind of understood, but again, crikey. Writing that piece for Vogue allowed me to explain my situation more honestly and sensitively. Which helped me and everyone concerned.

While I used to envy families with young children, now, I’m more likely to ponder what it would be like to have grownup children. To see them leave home or married. I sometimes lament to my husband that when we grow old, they’ll be no one, except perhaps a kindly nephew, to check we’re eating properly or getting to hospital appointments on time. The upside, though, is we can behave badly without being told off and lavish savings on our chosen charities, blowing the rest on expedition cruises (with the accent on ‘expedition’, not ‘cruises’).

Recently, however, I was overwhelmed to be asked by a beautiful friend to be her little girl’s godmother. I love to write my godchild rhymes, always incorporating her name. One about a happy, hoppy frog was a winner. The ‘gribbit’ thank you video was a joy to behold. I’ve decided to compose her poetry until I leave this wordly stage, changing the language and shaping the meaning as she matures. I hope it will express how being in her life has been one of the greatest honours of mine.

Disruptors, My Arse

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 11:19:16 GMT

My mission statement on modern work

I’ve been having conversations with my 50+ friends about work. Turns out quite a few of us believe our age makes it harder to get a new job. When I was sending out my CV two years ago, I deleted all dates. Didn’t want to let on I was at uni back when Bonnie Tyler was having a Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Of course, I shouldn’t have felt the need. Not only is ageism unlawful, I don’t qualify for state pension until I’m 67, so there was nothing odd about applying for jobs at 58, especially as we have an ageing population – although I prefer to call it a population with experience. Or more to the point, a population with experience that is often under-utilised by employers.

Yes, the culture of work has been changing fast. But in the modern office, if us oldies ever fall silent or look confused, don’t assume it’s because we can’t hack the pace. It’s often because we’re wondering how, in the name of sanity, did straightforward stuff become so unnecessarily complicated.

It starts with jargon, the knotweed of the corporate office. Why ask if something is ‘baked in’ when you mean ‘included’? Why announce you don’t have the ‘bandwidth’, when you just haven’t got time? Or take a deep dive (analyse)? Drill down (analyse)? Cascade the information (tell everyone)? Arghhhh. How I want to squeeze that ‘low hanging fruit’ (easy goals) until they scream for mercy.

Talking of bandwidth, why have meetings multiplied uncontrollably? Sure, a number are vital. The trouble is while some people’s jobs revolve around calling and chairing gatherings, others’ jobs are more practical. More do-y. So when a meeting finishes, the organisers get to tick off that task, while the rest have an even longer list - projects they never finish properly because they keep being called into bloody meetings.

Much chin-scratching time is also devoted to pursuits such as identifying brand pillars and agonising over mission statements. I’ll give you a mission statement. ‘Stop faffing about and serve your customers better’. An example; I went into a large chemist for a mascara. The compartment in the fluorescent display was empty. It continued to be so for well over a week. I stopped bothering. But looking at the display, I imagined the tortuous process that doubtless went into creating it. Models. Photographers. Flights. Late nights. But here’s my tip. If you want to sell more product, fill it up.

As for endless data collection, don’t get me started. Well do. Because just how useful is much of it? The other week I was collared for a supermarket survey on the way out. I told the researcher I shopped there every day but he insisted I rate, on a scale of one to ten, how memorable the experience had been. I repeated I shopped there every day. He pushed for an answer. I shoulder-shrugged a seven. He then wanted to know why it wasn’t a ten. Good grief.

At this point, we heard shouting in the taramasalata aisle. Despite the fracas, he asked me to choose from a lengthy list of reasons why I’d bought the items in my basket. I explained with such a wide selection, reasons would differ but he needed to mark just one. So when I said, ‘Well, the flowers are a gift, but clearly the cheese isn’t a present’, he, unhearingly, expressed astonishment I was buying cheese as a present. As the contretemps in condiments turned nasty and the police were called, he continued to flash pictures of celebs, asking if I recognised any who had fronted different store campaigns. Distractedly, I volunteered ‘Holly Willhoughby’. Now, no doubt all those ridiculous answers have been extrapolated at some meeting into a distorted conclusion that two plus two equals Amanda Holden.

The truth is a lot of my mature mates are quietly shocked how much money businesses inject into internal navel-gazing. On consultants. Change-makers. Disruptors. In my day, disruptors were two blokes arguing about Spurs. Now it means someone comes in, throws everything up in the air, and then, quite often, leaves. What might be useful (and cheaper) is to ask everyone on the ground – both young and old - what isn’t working and then make changes if they sound sensible.

I know you can’t generalise but I do think many of us mature types can offer action not distraction. Because we spot old ideas dressed up as new ideas. Bad ideas disguised as good ideas. If only more of us could find our voice, we could be an asset. Champion the notion there’s no point in change for change’s sake. And to demonstrate that the truly confident employee is the one who fixes what’s wrong, fast, and is prepared to recognise when something is fine and leave well alone. Then go home. Maybe even on time.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 11:19:11 GMT

The fundamentals of friendships

When I started primary school in my too-long uniform, ready to leave mum at the gates, the teacher suggested I hold the hand of a little girl who’d just arrived so we could walk up the path together. Over a decade later, when we left the sixth form, we passed through the gates, still holding hands. Our friendship formed the roots of our growth. Through learning, laughing and loving, it lasted the whole of our youth.

As I got older, a second special classmate shared my passion for ballet - I forgave her when she was cast as Cinderella and I was assigned Ugly Sister. I also had a chum who lived further afield, so we founded the Black Cat Club (it had a membership of two). Every week, we compiled a magazine to post to one another, with pictures, puzzles and more (perhaps that’s why I went into publishing and she took up graphic design).

At 18, we all went our separate ways, sending the odd card, attending a couple of weddings and latterly, parents’ funerals, but close ties, if not cut, were certainly dropped. And that was ok. Because friends enter and exit your life like characters in those Victorian toy theatres, sliding in and out of the drama. Sometimes, they’re around for the early scenes. Other times, they’re integral to the ongoing plot. But if they leave the stage, it doesn’t mean they weren’t a meaningful part of your story or that they won’t slide back in again when the time is right. Friendships are continually shaped and reshaped by careers, relationships, family responsibilities and new adventures. They are often a work in progress.

My best friends (you know who you are) have been essential to my sanity. They’ve picked me up from heartbreaks and divorce. Listened to me on a loop about crap jobs. Refused to give up on me during mental meltdowns. They’ve been cheerleaders and commiserators. Seen the funny me. The fearful me. All the snot and sadness as well as my sunny side.

So I’ve come to spot certain hallmarks of a true friend. To start with, you can always chat with ease, whether you spoke last week or last year. You can be yourself, not some Instagrammable version. They also know when to go softly softly and when to speak the unvarnished truth. You’re always there for each other, even when it’s inconvenient or an ungodly hour. And if you ever envy them (sadly, but humanly, I admit I sometimes do) it doesn’t diminish how much they mean to you.

Close connections can have a huge impact on your wellbeing. Research reveals strong friendships can reduce stress and have a positive effect on your blood pressure and heart health. As you age, studies also show those with such support are likely to live longer.

I’ve known one friend for nearly 40 years. We met at the first press event I ever attended, a cerebral affair that answered the burning question of the kind that raged in the 80s; ‘Who was Rear of the Year? It was Elaine Paige as you’re asking and in those days, the great British public saw nothing demeaning or sexist in such nonsense. As we sipped Champagne and pondered the merits of the Paige posterior, we just clicked. Since that day, she’s never seen the back of me.

At the other extreme, an intense friendship can last for a mere two weeks, when it fulfils a mutual need, perhaps two people side by side in a hospital bed, sympathising and strategising together. Or on an expedition where you need to trust the person holding the rope. I remember flying over the Okavanga Delta with a disparate group who’d become tightknit over the preceding days. One guy leaned over to me and said, you do realise once we’re back home, we’ll never see each other again. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. He was right.

Very rarely, I’ve fallen out with a friend. I’ve crunched the gears while navigating an unfortunate bend, stalling the ride, leaving us unable to get back on track. I felt bad at the time. Still do. Although generally, with friendships that I have simply outgrown, I let them retreat organically and glacially, gradually melting like a snowman in winter sun.

As for my inner circle, would they all get on so famously they’d want to be friends? Don’t think so. They’re very different – and I’m a variation of myself when I’m with them. Friendships tend to do that. They shine light on particular facets of our characters, in the same way light makes a diamond sparkle. Which is rather symbolic of turning 60, a major milestone that’s prompted me and my handholding schoolfriend to meet up once again. You could say she’s back in my life. The truth is, she never left.

Loft Living

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 11:19:15 GMT

Why I’m no Marie Kondo

Clearing a house after someone has died is a strange experience, combing through their possessions like a benevolent extra in CSI. Everything from the gems in their jewellery box to the contents of their fridge. But it reinforces a big lesson. You really can’t take any of it with you. When my parents passed away, while I kept the sentimental things, van-loads went to charity. Even more, into a skip. As for the furniture, a dealer quoted £90. I thought it was worth more, until he explained I had to pay him to take it away.

It's given me perspective on my own belongings. I’m under no illusion that when it’s my turn, when my house is being sorted and sifted, all the precious artefacts I hauled home from holidays – the hundredweight stone sculpture from Papua New Guinea and carvings from Jodhpur - will doubtless be viewed in the same way I look upon Capodimonte figurines and scenic ashtrays. Goners. But as they currently conjure up priceless memories, they’re earning their keep.

There are countless items that don’t. Because basically, I have too much stuff. A ridiculous amount, accumulated over the years. When I consider people in the world who survive on so little, it’s actually obscene that our loft looks like a second hand storeroom at Argos. Exhibit A) an electric shiatsu neck massager - a big old lump that sits on your shoulders in the style of an American footballer. How many times have I used it? Thrice. Exhibit B) a hair removal device that could double as a prop for Star Trek Voyager? How many epilations have I conducted? One. (Tears. In. Eyes.) And if you tipped out all the clothes I’ve amassed, it would resemble fashion landfill, seagulls wheeling overhead.

Interestingly, lockdown influenced how I viewed my clothes. I’d like to say it left me hankering for glamour, but it seduced me into slovenliness. So accustomed have I become to sheepskin ankle boots (slippers, basically) when I wear posh heels now, they feel about as comfortable as a ball and chain. But the upside of this sartorial hiatus was that it gave me the opportunity to analyse my wardrobe with a degree of detachment. Main observation; my cupboards were so squished, so compacted, that fishing anything from the back was akin to archaeological excavation.

I dug deep and turfed out. And oh the shame of confronting I’d bought similar items over and over again! I found enough black trousers and skirts to kit out a state funeral. So I’ve edited the best and bid adieu to the rest. The bonus of all this rummaging? Finding forgotten clothes I still love (some even still fit) plus a few retro designer labels that in our vintage-loving era give the impression they’ve been cleverly sourced in Parisian thrift stores, when in reality, I bought them over a quarter of a century ago and let them gather dust.

Some mementoes, I will never relinquish. Baby teeth with thank you messages from the tooth fairy (genuine). A ring that my jeweller friend created by repurposing modest diamonds from pieces of the past, combining them into one chunky ring with carat clout. My christening dress. My wedding dress. A picture of me on the iron throne from GoT. And a menu signed by the legend that is John Thaw.

Lots of other stuff, I’ve given to a charity shop - one day, the three mannequins in its window were sporting outfits from me (I took a picture like a tourist at Harrods). But during Le Grand Decluttering, I also found boxes marked ‘eBay’ - occasionally I do a little eBaying, most recently when I was down on my luck with work.

However, with online selling, you do have to be realistic about the volume you can process because once you’ve fielded questions from pixiesteve_x and 111sweetlips about inside leg measurements and authenticity, then searched for bubble wrap before queuing at the post office, if you have more than four things up for auction, you’re looking at a full-time job. Which is why I’m diverting most of my eBay merch to whoever wants it, including a polished wooden beach bat and ball set (while me and my husband might fancy ourselves in Ipanema we’ll never use it in a million years) and the bulky Nespresso machine (we’ve downsized to a traditional Italian on-the-hob pot).

Clearing the decks has given me space to breathe. To think. Look, I’ll never have an Instagrammable larder a la Marie Kondo. But more importantly, I’m less connected to ‘things’. I want, instead, to be connected to people, to experiences. To keep the useful, the meaningful, the beautiful and let the rest go. So if anyone would like the beach bats, then it’s first come, first serve. Play.

That '70s Show

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 11:19:10 GMT

Why I thank heaven I grew up with Angel Delight

Aah, the 1970s. I only have to hear the theme to Van der Valk or imagine a bowl of butterscotch Angel Delight to think wistfully of when I grew up and appreciate some of the benefits it bestowed. For sure, the era wasn’t all sweetness and light. There are hundreds of aspects that would shock today; thousands a woke teenager could take apart in seconds. But in these days of AI and algorithms, covid and cancel culture, I look back at my own childhood with a certain nostalgia.

Take TV. OK, it wasn’t the on-demand, multi-channel affair it is now but the popular shows were pivotal in family life. We all watched them. Properly. Not while distracted by individual devices. They punctuated our week: Top of the Pops (Thursday); Starsky & Hutch (Saturday); and The Big Match (Sunday, ‘shhh, Dad’s watching Arsenal’). Saturday also meant Sale of the Century with its signature intro: ‘And now, from Norwich, it’s the quiz of the week…’ Not Vegas, you understand. Norwich. We never understood why the East Anglian city lent particular weight to the proceedings but we went along with it anyway. Game on.

We did have virtual reality of sorts. It was called using your imagination. And you had to dig deep. Dressing up required creativity, ingenuity and the excavation of cupboards and trunks, not donning a readymade outfit made in China, delivered to your door. Nor did we have a schedule of organised activities. We weren’t endlessly ferried to cello and cheerleading. We spent summers lying in whispering grass watching passing clouds, cycling up and down the same old street for hours, catching stickleback in the shallows, swinging on tyres and pretending we owned ponies, to the point we believed we did.

We had no smartphones or tablets. Our only social medium was interacting face to face, immersed in real-time, real world exchanges. Every moment wasn’t pictured, every move wasn’t posted, every silly, youthful mistake wasn’t set in digital aspic to be picked over later. Even people’s holidays remained largely a mystery, except to the neighbour who fed your cat.

Another memory; we weren’t all winners. When I entered the high jump, the top and bottom of it was I came bottom. And that was fine because others had jumped higher in a competition constructed solely to measure who could jump the highest. Watching a ribbon pinned to a rival’s chest, I felt a momentary sting of defeat. But I had to get over it. Or get over it higher next time. It encouraged me to try harder. To respect talent. And to switch to javelin.

I didn’t receive avalanches of praise when I did triumph. One year, when I came first in just about every school exam, my parents told me I shouldn’t get ‘too cocky’ because I wouldn’t always be in top spot (see above). Now, when I hear of kids negotiating gifts in advance of academic glory, I laugh that my prize was being hit over the head with the humility hammer.

My generation had less say re food, with portion control often out of our hands. In restaurants, fruit juice was considered a starter! The waiter would deliver the diminutive glass of orange, grapefruit or tomato with quite the flourish. The knock-on effect? In my twenties, when I went to America and was served a copious salad, I passed it round the table, only later realising it was my own personal side.

Fizzy drinks were an occasional pleasure (and we recycled by returning the glass bottle to pocket the deposit). As for Lucozade, you only got to sip the neon nectar whilst ill. Elaborately wrapped in cellophane, it was Champagne for the poorly. Doubtless, elements of our diet were nutritionally crappy but when I see great pillows of multi-pack snacks and rows of carbonated drinks the size of scuba tanks, I realise restraint was once an easier concept to apply.

Then there was the music. Buying an album in Our Price Records was an event, taking it home to play, an almost spiritual experience. Nothing came at the touch of a button. You had to plan your gratification if you wanted to live your best life set to a soundtrack of Abba and Bowie, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.

Because in our heads, we drove the American freeways, sweeping past those alluring green signs, elbows out of windows, wind in our hair, even though in reality we lived in small semis near Woking. But those semis weren’t half bad. My family and friends weren’t rich. We weren’t poor. We were average. And in retrospect, being average in the 70s made us very lucky indeed. I might even thank the heavens by whipping up an Angel Delight.

60 is the New 60

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 11:19:21 GMT

And what's wrong with that?

Thursday is the new Friday. Blue is the new black. 60 is the new 50. Or 40. So the clichés go. Although I’m not convinced we should apply them to age at all. Sure, as life expectancy has increased, 60-somethings who would once have considered themselves old have generally become ‘younger’ in terms of health and attitude (it’s not unusual for them to be running their own businesses or half marathons) but why hang our age on the hook of a supposedly more acceptable number. Why can’t 60 be the new 60? Acknowledge what it represents now.

I’m not going to go all positive guru on you and argue 60 can be anything you want it to be. Because that’s cobblers. There are lots of can’ts in my life. I can’t do the splits. I can’t stay up super-late two nights in a row without feeling like I’m walking along the seabed wearing a copper diving helmet. I can’t brush my once luxuriant hair because I have a ponytail that could pass through the eye of a needle. And I can’t catch sight of my neck in the rear view mirror without letting out a sad sigh…and yes, I know we’re being encouraged to embrace (dislike that word) visible signs of ageing - to see wrinkles as expressions of a life well lived. I get that. I do. I just can’t see it on myself.

There are other kinds of can’ts I experience on a regular basis. I can’t bear that modern life is ridiculously overcomplicated. I hate jumping through technological hoops to get the simplest things sorted. Trying to prove I’m not a robot by picking out American fire hydrants in a picture, pondering whether a flange is infiltrating another square. Or retyping some code with numbers and letters that look like the product of a long-sucked stick of Brighton rock. And I can’t believe we’re at the point where the people scamming you by posing as your bank sound more professional and efficient than the bank itself.

But some can’ts are good. I can’t be arsed to do things I really don’t want to do. Like being dragged to tribute bands. Or playing rounders with a large group of friends in the park. Or sitting in a cold back garden waiting for a barbeque to char something to imperfection. I’ve spent a lifetime saying ‘yes’ to invitations when inside I was screaming ‘Dear God, no’. When you get to 60, the no-go gets easier.

As for the can-dos, now is the perfect time to tackle areas of knowledge that might be outside your comfort zone. Look at Jeremy Clarkson who at 61 says he’s processing a mind-blowing amount of info down on the farm. Sure, while the facts I’m absorbing in the realm of horticulture amount to diddly squat in comparison, it’s still an ‘engage brain’ situation, especially with all that Latin. As is wrapping my head around search engine optimisation for my nascent blog. And while I used to sneer at the whole influencer thing, well who’s to say I couldn’t get into that too? Not sure who I’d influence, but I could give it a try.

Tatoos. That’s another current can-do. According to trend reports, more of the mature are lining up for inking, the flag bearer being Dame Judi Dench who has ‘Carpe Diem’ inscribed on her wrist. Piercings too have become customary for an older crowd. Personally, I’ve always steered clear of tattoos for fear that as skin becomes more crepey, cute images might turn creepy. But I would definitely go for piercings. Nothing lingual or nostril-related, you understand. Perhaps stack a couple of diamonds on the edge of my ear. Some sparkle to switch focus from my neck.

And I strongly believe 60-somethings have a great deal to offer in the world of work, especially creatively. Because when you’ve been around the block a few times, you recognise some new ideas are actually old ideas. Even bad ideas. Which means someone like me will push themselves harder to find concepts that are genuinely different. Experience is a rich source to be mined and shared, not brushed aside.

Look, I don’t pretend to understand a fraction of what Gen Z and millennials appreciate. I have no clue if bitcoin is a good investment or how you go about holding a marriage ceremony in the metaverse (although it must cut down on the catering). And I can’t reel off a list of everything that’s considered ‘cheugy’ (pronounced chew-ghee and meaning ‘out of date’ if you’re asking). I suspect even using that word itself is probably cheugy by now. But I do know one phrase that’s way past its usefulness and that’s ‘60 is the new 40’. So very cheugy. Don’t you think?

Come Fly With Me

janmasters@mac.com (Jan Masters) — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 11:19:25 GMT

What is – and isn’t – on my bucket list

Never had one. A bucket list. Things to experience before I die. Too busy making it through the week. But given research from Sainsbury’s Bank found that at 60, when most traditional life goals have been met, bucket lists tend to become more adventurous, now seems an appropriate time to consider the concept.

For starters, you need to differentiate between aspirations and mere to-dos. So while regrout the bathroom tiles doesn’t cut it, flying in a hot air balloon is a bucket list fave. For me, that’s already a tick. On one ride, while the burner roared and the basket lifted, a young man prepared to scatter a relative’s ashes. Undeniably meaningful but due to where I was standing, I did wonder if auntie might get caught in my hair.

Online lists abound. Perusing one, I was struck by the suggestion to ‘whip up a homemade meal for your loved ones’, which in my humble opinion is aiming a wee bit low. However, further down the same list was ‘change the world’ - quite the leap from serving up a spag bol. If I buy into this kind of extreme thinking, then I shall opt for ‘bring about world peace’ and ‘successfully follow the plot of at least one episode of Endeavour’.

Invariably, travel dominates. This, I understand. I have a flag-studded map of the world above my dressing table. It reminds me I’ve seen polar bears in the Arctic, driven a reindeer sleigh in Lapland, watched humming birds in an Ecuadorian cloud forest and explored the Bungle Bungles in Australia. Studying the map now, I’m pinning my hopes on expeditions to Greenland and the Gobi Desert, magnetised as I am to wild, far-flung locations, partly because it’s in places such as these I experience true inner peace but mainly because during the pandemic, I’ve only made it to Southwold and Chorley Wood.

Extreme sports are classic inclusions but I’m too old to wantonly scare myself shitless. Can’t ride horses, hate skiing, couldn’t bungee jump to save my life and am way too nervy to scuba dive. But I am obsessed with oceans and the weird and wonderful world of the deep. The answer? To glide through the water in a submersible, studying the sea’s eye-widening treasures. I’ve even done my homework. A craft made by Triton called Project Neptune looks suitably racy, fashioned as it is in collaboration with Aston Martin. I just need to hitch a ride on a superyacht that has one as standard.

I think it’s also worth reconsidering things I could have done in the past but declined. For instance, on a commuter train from Waterloo to West Byfleet, I was once asked to be a magician’s assistant. What else have I turned down? Ah yes, many an invitation to Glastonbury. Maybe I was too hasty. Weighing up the two options, on balance I’d rather collude with a conjurer, based on snugger fitting outfits and superior toilet facilities.

I definitely want to write fiction, although I’m hopeless without a deadline. Otherwise, I procrastinate at a professional level. I’m reminded of Peter Cook. The late comedian recalled meeting a man at a party who declared he was writing a novel. Cook replied ‘Oh really. Neither am I’. But if I could get a literary agent to tap a watch with rabid urgency, my award-winning manuscript will be delivered forthwith.

Another suggestion from that initial ideas list was ‘tell parents and siblings you love them’. This stopped me in my tracks. While I know many people who do this as a matter of course, I was raised in an era where familial love was often taken as read rather than overtly expressed. In fact, it wasn’t until my elderly mum was very ill in hospital that I told her the full extent of my feelings. Thank God I had the chance. So this one is going on my bucket list: ‘make a point of telling everyone who matters how much they mean to me’. Why wait until we’re in dire straits in A&E?

And while in sombre territory, I’d like to manage my horrible anxiety better. To worry less, not more and more. Sure, there are key things one needs to take seriously, but when I think of the thousands of hours I’ve agonised over irrelevances, I weep at the waste of emotional energy. If I could focus on real concerns and discard the rest, that would make a dramatic difference to the rest of my time of earth.

Lightbulb moment! Maybe that’s it. Instead of a bucket list, perhaps I should compile a ‘f***k it list’. Put all the mental noise and nonsense on that. Then symbolically burn it and scatter the ashes over the Serengeti from a hot air balloon. Mission accomplished. Just mind your hair.