One thing that does not get better with age – at least quite old age – is hair! When I was very, very young I had pretty blond hair which had no ‘body’ at all. My mum would put a little ribbon round a small strand of hair and five minutes later the ribbon would be lost! As I grew older (eight, ten years old) my hair had turned into a strange mixture of colours – maybe you could call it hazel. It was dead straight but there was a lot of it. As I got older (fifteen, eighteen) I tried to curl it – the curls would straighten out in around ten minutes. I even permed it once or twice – with a home perm. Sadly, I was always too impatient to wait for the perm actually to work!

Later in my life, when I could afford it, I would take myself off to the hairdresser and have a “curly perm“ and then I would have – at last – curly hair! I have quite fast growing hair, even now and my curly perm would grow out fairly soon so that I would have longish hair with curly-ish bottoms. I loved it!

Perms became fairly expensive but while I was a teacher I could still afford one every so often. I had a perm when Julian first saw me. I think that was what he liked when he glimpsed me standing behind the bar of the wine bar his dad owned. He often tells me that he thought I looked like Polly in Fawlty Towers. I don’t, really – and especially I don’t when I don’t have curly hair!

I gave up full time teaching in my late 40’s and shortly thereafter my hair turned a mixture of hazel and grey. That was okay! I could grow it out and wear it up or have it cut short. I didn’t mind it at all. At some point in my 60’s I realised that I had grey hair and that I looked my age!

I was going into Ramsgate for an appointment with my acupuncturist and decided to go by bus. I waited, the bus came along, I stepped up onto the bus and asked for the price to Ramsgate: “Don’t you have a bus pass?”asked the driver.

For those of you who were born in the late ‘fifties onward, a bus pass is a ‘benefit’ given to people when we reach the age of 60. [The government has now changed the pension age to 65, and shortly to 67 and the bus pass is for pensioners]. Anyway, I was amazed that the driver thought I had reached 60! (I was 63.) People who saw me had always underestimated my age. When I was 20, I was annoyed. When I was 40, I was pleased!

Of course, it was the grey/white hair that gave it away! Nonetheless, my hair was strong and thick. Sometimes I grew it out and wore it up, sometimes I would have it cut really short.

Now I am 83. A parting in my hair, instead of being like a country lane, is like a motorway! When I comb my hair so many hairs are caught in the comb! I hate to think how many are going down the drain when I wash my hair in the shower! Each individual hair is about half as thick as it used to be, too.

Jennie gave me some shampoo and a bottle of a potion that are supposed to help my hair start growing in the follicles that have given up, for my birthday. I’m not able to use it every time I wash my hair as I have a problem with something I think is dandruff – it’s definitely little white flakes, anyway.

So, hair is one thing that doesn’t get better with age. I could go on, mentioning skin, neck, boobs, upper arms, tummy, feet and body in general which also starts down hill with age. Then there are sight and hearing – neither of which is as good as it was just a few years ago. And all those strange little growths here and there! And the fact that I can’t drink coffee after about 1 in the afternoon……….

……… I suppose there aren’t a great many things that get better with age if you’re talking about the body but at least old age is preferable to the alternative.

When I meet someone who is 70, from my standpoint I can truthfully say, “That’s not old!”