Why Can't A Woman....

[Sundae]

I loved that song (thought it was about me when I was 15) until I heard he wrote it to his wife, before running off with a super-model.

When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

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

Jenny Joseph

(I know this has been posted before, but it's an old favourite.)

To me, the most shocking thing about that poem was that my Mum sent it to me by email, as a new discovery. I'd pinned it up on the kitchen notice board about 5 years previously. But it was poetry, and probably in the way of important telephone numbers and appointments. Once she got onto email, everything was worth forwarding.

It also made me smile that she thought it would make me think of her.
Errrr - no.
In a narcissistic way it made me think of me.
After getting divorced (SHOCK!) I became quite brazen in public.
If you're on the fringes of decent society you lose the need to care.