Rose Rouse

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 […]

This week, Advantages of Age invited a host of different people to respond to the question – What freedoms have you found in getting older? Here are their responses. Please let us know yours…

I teach two wee […]

“real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing here and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet from where a s […]

‘In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me, there lay an invincible summer.’ Albert Camus

I’d had some crazy times. At 43, I split with my long-term partner and headed straight into a number of re […]

It never used to happen like this. I’d arrive home – my former family home, a detached 1970s house in the West Yorkshire village of Menston, not far from the quietly salubrious and much better known inclines of […]