Aug 24, 2008 10:47 PM
by Moannie
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
From, Warning, by Jenny Joseph
Don't you just love poetry? You can read a poem and be reminded that there is nothing new in the world; every emotion that man has ever felt has been covered in prose and rhyme: love, lust, hate, fear, anger and, well, you get the picture.
I believe this particular poem was written for me. Comfort comes first, then colour swiftly followed by thrift [a bargain from TkMaxx makes my day] I was the first girl to wear Jeans in my home town, and was hissed by a woman in Barcelona in the early fifties for wearing them on The Ramblas.
I wore filmy lavender to the Sports day at number two daughter's Boarding School, when all the other mother's were in twin sets and sensible shoes-terrible of me, I know and I did have frisson of apprehension that I might have gone a step to far.
I wore paper panties on a long hot car journey in Spain, only to find on reaching our destination they had disintegrated. As I was also in a mini skirt [in my forties, daring or what?] I spent the day glued to the front of JP.
Today I walked the dog wearing Uggs, flared jeans, a purple sweater and my Borsalino, [I mean me, not the dog] I stopped to talk to an old friend and she said, 'You look nice, dear.' I said that I had decided to become officially eccentric and she replied 'But I always thought you were, Annie.'
Favourites: My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, Seamus Heaney's poem: When all the others were away at Mass, a heartbreaking declaration of his love for his mother. Tony Harrison, Cristina Rossetti, John Donne, Dylan Thomas, and on and on and on.
And for Fat, frumpy & fifty... Wendy Cope's Faint Praise
And here's one I made earlier: Had I known then what I know now, I'd do it all again, and how.
