Sleeping as I get older is a huge thing!!! If I don’t sleep, then I am likely to be grumpy, reactive and extra-feisty. All day. I’m sure you agree.

Sometimes, I don’t sleep when I’m on my own – lots of restless […]

The Track Re-visited

 I am here again. On Asanga’s wild land. Slow running up the track that I walked and slowly ran up during the first lockdown in March and April 2020 when I was here in N Wales, in Gwynedd an […]

How are you doing on the creative front? Has getting older freed you into a more creative place?

I just googled exactly that and depressingly it came back with endless reports about the brain being less creative […]

For the past seven years, I have been having a Living Apart Together relationship with my partner, Asanga. He lives on his beautiful wild land in North Wales and I live in my funky flat in Harlesden, North West […]

From our inception in 2016, Advantages of Age has always had a proclivity for poetry. In 1936, William Butler Yeats, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, described Edith Sitwell’s p […]

Cards mean a lot to me. Birthday cards and Xmas cards particularly. I love both giving and receiving them. For me, it’s an opportunity to write personal messages, or long drawled out, hieroglyphic-looking paeans t […]

There’s something about starting a new pursuit and passion when you’re older. It’s stimulating in a different way. I began writing poetry when I was 55 ten years ago. Partly, because it was non-commercial. I knew […]

Could you tell us about WOFFF and why you created it?

Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) champions and showcases the work of older women on screen and behind the camera with an annual short film festival and […]

Old – English ald, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch oud and German alt, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘adult’, shared by Latin alere ‘nourish’.

I was writing this piece before AoA – Suzanne Noble a […]

Eve Tibber is a member of the Cannock Mill Co-Housing Project in Colchester. She’s a member of the Advantages of Age FB Group and we decided to ask her a few questions because so many of our members are interested […]

I’m talking personal development here, not a coffin or a chutney-making one. These emotion-evoking workshops are all about transforming oneself in order to go out and transform the world. It starts with the self a […]

I buy a new bra laced with dahlias.
Calvin Klein. Dress is Indian
embroidered olive green silk.
Shepherd’s Bush Market.
Candelabras are cheaply ornate. Car
boot. Oh Lord, teeth have been savaged.
Dental h […]

‘After the soaring, a peace
like swans settling on a lake.
After the tumult and the roaring winds,
Silence.’

Sheila Kitzinger, the natural childbirth activist who died in 2015

I am 64, and entering into the ter […]

Napoleon planted these pines,

the soil is sandy but not a beach.

I want to lie down,

stare upwards like a child

who hasn’t had enough clouds.

The watery landscape keeps me upright.

On cherche les o […]

‘For a poem to emerge properly, you have to avoid confronting it. You have to keep it in sight without looking at it directly.’ Fiona Sampson, poet, in Mslexia

Twelve years ago, I’d never written a poem. I wasn’ […]

Flamboyance has always attracted me and as I get older, the attraction gets stronger. The etymology goes back to the Old French ‘flambe’ – a flame. Exactly. There’s a burning about Flamboyance that is almost […]

‘We increasingly seek more complex and subtle imaginative explorations of identity than societal expectations of gender.’  Alex Clark.

I truly discovered the importance of female friendship in my 50s. Po […]

I wasn’t going to write about this at all. I was going to write about being A Recovering Drama Queen. Finally. However, very much still in the process of ‘recovery’. It’s an age and awareness thang. […]

There’s a gathering buzz around the Death Café phenomenon – there have been 3859 in 40 countries including Iceland and South Korea – and so when one was announced in my ‘hood and in the perfect location, Kensal G […]

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.” Carl Jung

For quite a while, I’ve been the sort of person who recognizes my inner Hitler. Seriously, I do not prete […]