I was feeling unusually disconcerted yesterday when I went out shopping in Brighton, where I’m staying for a few days with my son James, his wife Jaimy, and three week old Penelope “Sweet Pea” Porch (who wasn’t due to arrive for another three and a half weeks!).
“That’s strange,” I thought to myself, “why do I feel so peculiar?”
Then I realised that the streets were full of young people, especially late teenage girls, and I had the unpleasant notion that I was the oldest person out and about in Brighton. It was most demoralising I can tell you. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt old before and the prospect seemed daunting. Now that I’m a grandma, will anyone notice? My sister, Mary, was just thirty-eight when she became “Granny” – and she still doesn’t look old.
Suddenly, I was scrutinising people passing by on the pavement. There were hordes of girls, some in laddered fishnet tights under miniskirts (must be all the rage), many in black leggings and multi-coloured tops; there were redheads, yellow-heads, black-heads, white-heads and blue-heads, and some with hats; there were tattooed girls, pierced girls, highly made up girls; they were tall and leggy, short and broad in the beam, hippy types and city types. I wondered why nobody was working at such an hour. How heartening it was to see a black man of around twenty-five – he had dreadlocks and a big smile. Hooray, there were a couple of bearded chaps with very neat hair, perhaps thirty years old and wearing checked trousers like Rupert Bear! A ginger-haired man of about forty-five disembarked from his bike and looked side-ways at me, without speaking (they don’t speak unless invited to in these parts but when you initiate a conversation they are inordinately pleased).
An old man in his sixties (an exception to the rule) approached and offered to recite a poem for a coin – “For a hostel” – and seemed disappointed at the sight of a paltry one pound coin; nevertheless, he honoured his promise with a poem about his foot, which was quite good (the poem, not the foot – he had a gammy foot!). I was pleased to meet the old man… until I conjectured that he was probably much younger than he appeared, considering his circumstances. It was with some excitement that I spotted a middle-aged woman walking towards me, not that I could see in detail from that point but she had a figure and walk that denoted a certain amount of age. As she neared I noticed that she was wearing face paint other than make-up – a curly yellow pattern painted on the bridge of her nose and ending in flourishes on her cheeks. Also, she wore a bright green and yellow silk scarf tied around her head and knotted at the front – rather like the “Mammy” in “Gone With the Wind”. It didn’t go with her harem trousers and I thought she might have been slightly bonkers. Then I laughed to myself… I was wearing royal blue harem pants myself!
To avoid being downhearted I took to photographing any, and every, person over forty in the streets of Brighton. I ended up with about ten. Incidentally, I was not walking aimlessly – I was looking for the “Waitrose” supermarket but I couldn’t find it. Well on the way to the next town of Hove, at last I decided to ask someone for directions. A couple of ladies, one quite old, had stopped to chat (how unusual!) and so I interrupted them.
“Excuse me,” I said (they were thrilled that I, too, had stopped), “I wonder if you could direct me to Waitrose?”
“Oh,” beamed the older lady, “it’s quite a way. Just jump on a bus and it’s the next stop. Do you see that bus up there? Waitrose is the building with the scaffolding on.”
She noticed the look on my face and added:
“No, you could walk.”
Thank goodness – the old lady recognised, rightly, that I was quite young enough to easily walk the hundred metres up the road to Waitrose!
