When a friend of mine turned seventy, I gave her a book on the history of old age; she was horrified and gave it back. I was surprised that she reacted in that way but it was probably me being tactless and unaware. The gift wasn’t intended as a rather off joke on my part, rather a real interest in the exploration of ageing and the facts about our treatment through the centuries.

Because of course, ageing affects all of us and at the tender age of twenty five (the age when we reach maturity, allegedly) and thereafter, the dreaded noughts birthdays seem to weigh heavily on us. Personally, in the 1960s I was rather looking forward to being thirty – I imagined myself as the French film actress Jeanne Moreau, famous at the time for her sultry sexiness and compelling on-screen talent in her thirties and well beyond. I have long had a fascination with the ageing process, helped I’m sure by playing many different characters of all ages, over many years in the theatre.

At nineteen. I joined a theatre repertory company in Derby which produced a different play every fortnight. Since I was the youngest member of the company, I got the small parts left over when the main ones had been cast. The upshot was that I played a lot of old ladies. I made the most of these opportunities by heavily making up my teenage face with wrinkles, created varicose veins with rolled up pieces of paper stuffed down thick stockings and dusted my brown hair with copious amounts of talc. So as I moved, a small cloud of white dust would follow me around. In a play called Rookery Nook I was the char lady (don’t write in please that’s what they were called in the early 1960s) and pronounced the immortal exit line “...and what’s more there’s an ‘orse in my kitchen…” followed by the edifying round of applause as I exited.

There’s nothing quite like literally standing in another’s shoes to know how it feels. Playing a part gives you objectivity and if you try hard enough, you can inhabit the role. I am grateful to those early years in rep learning, as they say, on the job. But I was glad to eventually play women of my own age.

Arriving in London in the mid 1960s, I was enthralled and swept up in the big city energy after the dark, smoky, behind-the-times midlands. I found an agent and began playing small parts on television, mostly in sit-coms. I wore lovely clothes and enjoyed being pampered in the TV hair and make-up department. All except one part in a Wednesday Play where I played a shaven headed woman dressed in sackcloth in an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel, Ape and Essence. This post-apocalyptic play involved a yearly orgy which resulted in much grunting and fumbling among the actors in the sack cloth garments and became unintentionally hilarious, more like a Carry On film than this serious dystopian play. It was of course in the time before intimacy coaches.

Yet something else was tugging at my sleeve and after visiting the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, run by the irrepressible Jim Haynes, who went on to co-found the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and whose life maxim was never to say no; I wanted to be in the thick of developing new ideas for making theatre that wasn’t always about the well-made play. This new theatre didn’t have to take place on a conventional proscenium stage but could happen anywhere, in the street, in disused buildings, barns as well as in private homes.

Bite Out

I became involved in workshops which offered exciting new theatre techniques and dealt with contemporary, often political, themes. I joined a company called The Wherehouse La Mama which was an off-shoot of the famous New York La Mama Theatre. We were a very physical theatre company and I became fitter and stronger than I have ever been before or since. Our first piece was called Group Juice - a very sweaty piece in tights and tee shirts with no set or props. It followed the individual’s journey from the cradle, through society’s manipulation, to death. When we presented the show at Queen’s University Belfast in 1969, the students went wild and threw their seat cushions in the air. The wonderful celebrations that followed was partly because of the theme of the piece and partly because we were one of the few theatre companies to travel to Northern Ireland at the time. When we left, our new fans gave each of us a bottle of whiskey and stood on the quayside waving their handkerchiefs, a touching and strangely old-fashioned gesture that has remained with me ever since.

We toured European cities in the summer of 1970 and the group finally split up acrimoniously in Amsterdam, at the end of the tour. We had behaved very much like a rock band; feted, slated, creative and hugely energetic but differences of opinion did for the company in the end.

I stayed on in that beautiful city for a year, running theatre workshops and studying singing at the Conservatoire in the Hague. Then homesickness urged my return to England where many new experimental companies were forming and I relished working with groups like The Phantom Captain, Lumiere and Son, Rational Theatre and The People Show. Finally forming my own company called Salt Theatre with another actor, Sandy Maberley

I had now reached my thirties, I hadn’t become a Jeanne Moreau lookalike but had discovered feminism. My consciousness was becoming painfully raised through books like Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and, Women’s Estate by Juliet Mitchell. Feminist theatre companies were being formed : Monstrous Regiment, Beryl and the Perils, Scarlet Harlets, Cunning Stunts, the Women’s Theatre Group and many more.

Cell

Our company Salt also worked with a feminist perspective in productions with women and men. We were a group of like-minded young performers devising our own shows. Headlock about a family of wrestlers, toured with our very own wrestling ring and we wrestled both physically and psychologically with the family dynamic and played inside and outside venues to crowds of enthusiastic young people.

When I was thirty six, I began to co-write a script for a feature film with an American film director. The idea was that I would play the lead in this dark comedy. The script did the rounds of production companies in the UK and began to garner interest. As I was an unknown actor, a ‘name’ was sought for the male lead. It was then that I became intensely scrutinised and my weight, eyes and teeth were deemed not good enough for film, but most of all, my age, at thirty six, was a complete no no. The film was eventually made in the US with an all-American cast and I had to fight for a writing credit.

In my early forties, I worked with Scarlet theatre (formerly Scarlet Harlets) which included working on a show called (R) Age which I directed, about the eternal triptych of the maiden, the mother and the old woman. It was the first time I had worked with an older actor and it was fascinating to draw on Una Brandon Jone’s experiences of growing old and her determination to keep acting into her seventies.

Cell

After a long career in the theatre, performing in many shows with different companies and writing for theatre and opera, I was commissioned in 2023 by Oxford University to write a solo show about Julian of Norwich. Living in the 14^th century. she is our most famous mystic and the first woman to write in English. Her beautiful book Revelations of Divine Love was written in secret while she was permanently secluded in a tiny cell attached to a church in Norwich. Julian lived for over thirty years, well into her seventies, in this cell that she could never leave. My show Cell based on her life and work was part of the Medieval Women Exhibition at the British Library.

So here I am at 82 and still working. My new solo show is called ‘Aw Bless! What is old age for?’

It is about ageing and ageism because it feels necessary to write this piece now, given the overwhelming feeling that me and my contemporaries are “othered” by a society that values youth much more highly than age.

There are more people alive in the world aged over sixty today than there have ever been before in history. This is often seen as a problem especially because the falling birth rate gives rise to the idea that there won’t be enough people to pay for our longevity, or our care when it becomes necessary. The pension triple lock is a source of resentment, wrongly assuming that all old people have money, but when there is still a great deal of pensioner poverty in this country. The inadequacy of highly expensive care homes, the loneliness among old people, the patronising behaviour and often downright rudeness towards us, all contributes to ageism on the part of those who are not yet old themselves.

Ageism happens between the ears and is engendered by fear. Everyone wants to live a long time and many want to remain eternally youthful, so are spending a great deal of time and money to capture and hold on to it. All this belief that youth has the only value, adds to the hostility towards old age. So it is important for us to push back against an ageist society that ignores our experience, our contributions and belittles ageing as some sort of failure and death even more so. A great many people over sixty are still working or would like to be if they were allowed and there are uncounted numbers of old people volunteering in the charity sector and many others giving unpaid caring for their loved ones.

The title ‘Aw Bless! is taken from the patronising comment made so often about an old person. The show draws on my life experiences of ageing and those of friends and neighbours, as well as current research plus some history of old age. It both funny and dark and performed with much goodwill for an audience of all ages. An important part of the show is devoted to the audience, where they are invited to share their experiences and opinions about ageing at whatever stage of life they might be – ageism also affects the young.

By the way, the friend I mentioned at the top of this piece is very supportive of my project and has now bought her own copy of the book on ageing!

Ah Bless! What is old age for? is now available for bookings. If you would be interested in having the show, please contact me on my website cindyoswin.com for more details.

1. We’re all worried about what’s happening to writers and artists. Their worked being scraped by AI companies - no permission, no royalties. Val McDermid talked

   about her experiences in the Herald. ‘Val McDermid turns 71 today.

   In February, the Scottish crime writer warned that writers are facing a ‘massive threat’ from artificial intelligence.

   She said: “AI can produce a certain kind of book and it is learning all the time. The only reason it can produce any books at all is because it’s stolen out of all of our texts. All of our texts have been scraped.

   “They have taken 150 pieces of my work, for which I’ve had no recompense, they’ve not asked my permission and I have no say in what they do.

   “There are court cases on the way now, but it’s tip of the iceberg stuff.

   “There was never any point when they sought a partnership with creatives. They just stole our work and ripped us off.”

   The author said she was confident that writers would always have a way of writing in a way “that cannot be replicated by a machine.”

   She added: “A machine can pretend to have feelings, but it doesn’t have feelings and it doesn’t understand emotions at the deep level that we do that.

   “Sometimes when you are reading a book and an event happens you expect the characters to behave in a particular way, but they don’t.

   “They respond in a different way because they are human because they have a range of possibilities.

   “I think the human writer will always have a head-start on the machines for that.”’

   

   2. All round amazingly creative woman - artist, stylist, body armour maker - Izzy Bicknell died suddenly earlier this year. Her best friend, wrote an obituary for the Guardian that captured Izzy’s spirit.

   ‘My friend Isabelle Bricknall, who has died aged 71, led a richly creative life spanning fashion, art and music. Over several decades she worked as a model, fashion designer, stylist and artist. She brought an instinctive eye for colour and composition to everything she did.

   From the mid-1970s to 80s she worked with the British designer Zandra Rhodes, carrying out hand-finishing, beading and embellishment work on garments while also modelling in the fashion shows. Working for Rhodes fostered Izzy’s lifelong appreciation for bold, theatrical design.

   Her longstanding connection with the illustrator Jo Brocklehurst led to Izzy co-curating Nobodies and Somebodies at the House of Illustration in 2017, which celebrated Brocklehurst’s portraits of the punk and club scenes of London, Berlin and New York. One of the drawings, Ruber Angel (1994), was of Izzy wearing the distinctive steel “body armour” she designed and made with her boyfriend at the time, Anthony Gregory, that was popular on the fetish club scene.

   

   A portrait of Isabelle Bricknall by Brian Would

   Born in Surrey, Izzy was the daughter of Odette Vincent, a hairdresser and beauty therapist, and William Bricknall, an engineer then business administrator in the oil industry. They moved around for William’s work, including a period spent in Montreal, Canada, eventually settling in Suffolk, where Izzy attended Claydon secondary school. Izzy studied dress design and manufacture at Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design, then completed an MA in fashion and textiles at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University) in 1975.

   After collaborating with Rhodes, Izzy became a familiar figure within London’s creative circles, working across modelling, styling and performance. She modelled often for the fashion illustrator and lecturer Colin Barnes, as well as the Japanese photographer Yuriko Takagi, for whom she also styled photoshoots and introduced to other artists. In the 90s, Izzy turned increasingly towards visual art, creating glass installations, sculpture and performance works.

   A spontaneous public “mermaid” dance performance, Pearls of Passion, outside Tate Modern in 2000, reflected her fascination with mythology and transformation. The ocean remained a constant in her work, expressed through imagery and a quiet call for environmental awareness. She remained committed to supporting charitable projects such as Marine Connection, Médecins Sans Frontières, Alzheimer’s Research UK and Fashion Revolution initiatives.

   Izzy was a close friend and collaborator of more than 20 years. Fellow friends remember her as gentle and quietly formidable, with a sharp eye and singular perspective. Her humour was distinctive. When confronted with overblown explanations of contemporary art, she would whisper, “Art bollocks”. Of fashion trends, she quipped: “The bland leading the bland”. Fiercely loyal, curious and generous, she moved through the world with warmth and independence.

   She is survived by her three brothers, John, Richard (her twin) and David.’

3. - who founded the end of life planning company Before I Go Solutions - and I are doing an inclusive Zoom conversation about Care next Monday June 15th from 6 45 til 7 45pm. Your future care - what could that look like. Let’s discuss

   . If you'd like to join us - please sign up so that we know you’re coming. It feels like such an important conversation at this time. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../lets-talk-about-care-and...?

4. This seems such a good idea. A cuddle bed where you can hold your loved one before they die. It made me remember jumping into bed with my mum when she had sepsis and was 90. It just seemed like the right thing to do. She recovered and went on to live another eighteen months.

5. We loved this idea. Dancing pall bearers. Yes please.

6. We were delighted to see this post by Astonishing on the radical woman/writer/activist that Erin Pizzey is. She is underappreciated. ·

‘“November 1971. Chiswick, West London.

Erin is 32 years old. She is not a lawyer. Not a politician. Not a doctor.

She is a housewife with a borrowed key to a rundown community hall at 2 Belmont Terrace - a small, cold building that Hounslow Council has given her for next to nothing.

Her plan is modest. Offer a warm room. A cup of tea. A place for mothers with young children to get out of the house.

Then the first woman walks through the door.

She is covered head to foot in bruises.

She is clutching 2 small children. She is shaking.

She doesn’t want tea. She wants somewhere to hide from her husband.

Within weeks. Still 1971.

There are now 40 mothers and children sleeping in 4 tiny rooms.

Erin has no funding. No staff. No legal authority to run a shelter.

She doesn’t care. She starts calling the press. She starts calling the police.

The police tell her they cannot enter a private home over a “domestic dispute.” It is the law.

Here’s what makes it worse.

A female civil servant - a woman - tells Erin flatly, “There wasn’t a problem of battered wives until you made one.”

Erin hangs up the phone. Then she goes back to her 40 residents and makes sure they are fed.

1973. Chiswick, London.

The 4-room center is bursting. Women are arriving from across Britain. Word has spread through whisper networks - one woman telling another, “There is a place. Go to Chiswick. She won’t turn you away.”

Erin never turns anyone away.

By 1973, Chiswick Women’s Aid is hosting the first ever National Women’s Aid Conference in the UK - a gathering of women who all realized, at the same moment, that what Erin had built needed to exist everywhere.

1974. A larger house on Chiswick High Road.

The council allows a maximum of 36 residents.

Erin ignores this.

At peak times, 150 women and children are living inside those walls. They sleep on floors, on chairs, in hallways. The building smells of cooking and fear and something else - relief.

She is taken to court for overcrowding. She appeals all the way to the House of Lords.

She keeps the doors open the entire time.

That same year, she writes a book. She calls it Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. It becomes the first published account of domestic violence in British history. It sells across the world. It uses real stories from real women inside her shelter.

Overnight, a problem that did not officially exist is on front pages from London to New York.

1975–1979. Britain. Then the world.

The shelter movement explodes. Dozens of refuges open across the UK, modeled exactly on what Erin built in that borrowed hall with no money and no permission.

Australia follows. Canada follows. The United States follows. By the end of the decade, the pattern Erin created in 4 small rooms in West London has been replicated in hundreds of shelters across the Western world.

MP Jack Ashley stands up in Parliament and says, “It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical.”

Erin is ranked 14th in a poll of the 100 women who shook the world.

She is awarded the Italian Peace Prize.

She is awarded a CBE.

And the charity she founded, Chiswick Women’s Aid- which became Chiswick Family Rescue, then Refuge - becomes the largest domestic violence charity in the United Kingdom, with over 460 employees and an annual revenue of more than £33 million.

It all began with 1 woman, 1 borrowed building, and a refusal to say no.

Erin Pizzey passed away in October 2025, aged 86. She never stopped.

Share this with someone who needs to know - one ordinary person, refusing to look away, can build a shelter that holds the whole world.”’

.

Carole at 19

IT WAS only as I was writing the final book in the trilogy about the Two Js that I truly appreciated the significance of a small notebook I discovered among a pile of ‘stuff’ in a cardboard box while I was decluttering. That notebook contained details of my short stay in a London mother and baby home in the 1960s when I was pregnant and unmarried.

Along with the notebook came a lifetime of buried memories, some so painful that I could only allow myself to consider a few at a time.

Those were the days when being single and pregnant carried an enormous social stigma. It was a shameful secret that had to be concealed at all costs from an unforgiving society.

The disgraced girl was hidden away until her child was born, when it was given to new parents, while the heartbroken birth mother was sent back to her previous life. Her fall from grace would never be mentioned by anyone. It was if nothing had happened.

When aged 19 and unmarried I discovered I was pregnant, my devastated parents threw me out of our family home in Sussex, desperate to protect themselves from gossip and social ruin. They upheld the unshakeable belief that preserving the family’s good name was more important than their daughter’s well being.

Abortion was illegal and definitely never an option for me, so I became an unmarried mother.

Once the overwhelming and paralysing mists of panic had cleared, I contacted a London charity called The Unmarried Mother and her Child, which arranged for me to work as a nanny with a family in Hampshire before going to a mother and baby home in South West London.

There were mother and baby homes throughout the UK. Pregnant girls with nowhere else to go, moved into these homes six weeks before their babies were born. After the birth, they had to look after their infants for another six weeks before they could be adopted. Looking after your child for six weeks before having it snatched away from you was certainly the harshest punishment of all.

Although I had decided very early in my pregnancy that I wanted to keep my baby, it quickly became obvious that I would be totally unable to do so. My parents had made it perfectly clear that the child and I would not be welcome and without family support I couldn’t earn enough money to care for both of us. I was distraught when I eventually accepted that there was nothing I could do. My child had to be adopted.

Even now, I find it difficult to describe how horrendous that mother and baby home was. Those of us who ended up there were treated with spiteful malice, simply because we’d had sex before marriage – and had been caught out by becoming pregnant.

A supportive friend told me: “You can sleep with a guy for ages without anyone finding out but as soon as you fall pregnant, the whole world knows what you’ve been up to. Women can’t run away from their mistakes as men can – it’s there for nine months for all to see!”

I was so distressed by life in the mother and baby home that I only stayed a few days instead of the three months originally intended. I was fortunate; the family I had been working for allowed me to return, providing the love and care my parents had refused to give me.

Most girls who got themselves ‘into trouble’ as it was euphemistically termed, had no choice but to stay in that dreadful place, looking after their babies until they were taken away to be legally adopted. Although I escaped the mother and baby home, there was no escaping adoption. Separation for life. An unimaginable cruelty imposed by society and religion.

When I fled the home, I was so traumatised that I was determined the experience should never be forgotten. Thus I wrote down the basic facts for posterity. Then life took over and I forgot all about those scribbled notes buried in a box.

The notebook survived several house moves across the UK and when it eventually surfaced, unmarried motherhood was no longer a sin of epic proportions and few people remembered what it had been like.

So I wrote Perfectly Imperfect: The Story of the Two Js as a tribute to the thousands of girls over the years who had been forced to have their precious babies adopted.

This book is a novel – fiction based on fact – and includes my own story intertwined with those of several other women: unmarried mothers forced to have their babies adopted; girls who had undergone risky illegal abortions, and those who were themselves adopted children.

Perfectly Imperfect tells the story of young and unsophisticated Juliet, whose two-week holiday on the Italian island of Capri turned into a four-month stay when she was swept off her feet by Enzo, a gorgeously handsome Italian singer and guitarist.

Juliet’s parents reluctantly accepted her constant excuse of extending her holiday to learn the language. But when she eventually telephoned to say she was going to marry Enzo and go with him to America where he had a tour of concerts lined up, they forcefully demanded she returned to England. So Juliet went home, leaving Enzo in Italy – and she didn’t go back.

Having gone home merely to pacify her parents, Juliet had every intention of returning to Italy to marry Enzo. But once in England without him she got cold feet, seriously worried that he would eventually tire of her and go off with one of the glamorous women who were always prowling around. If that happened Juliet knew she would die of a broken heart. Could a man who loves women ever be faithful to one woman? Enzo was a gorgeously charismatic man who could have any woman he wanted. Why did he want her?

With an understanding beyond her years, Juliet knew that the grief she felt at leaving him would be nothing compared to the certain agony if she returned and Enzo left her for someone else. Not going back to Italy was self-preservation.

Shortly after returning home Juliet had an unexpected and definitely unwanted liaison with a former boyfriend and few weeks later she discovered she was pregnant.

Although believing in her heart that the baby was Enzo’s child, there was no DNA testing in the sixties and therefore no way of proving paternity. The previous boyfriend offered marriage – before changing his mind shortly afterwards, deciding that the baby was not his.

This book follows Juliet’s traumatic journey from being an unmarried mum, to giving her baby for adoption and then the struggle to pick up the threads of a normal life once again.

Almost three decades later Juliet is reunited with her daughter. The child she had named Vittoria – the Italian version of the classic English Victoria – had been renamed Clarissa by her adoptive parents. Clarissa tracked down Juliet when a change in the law allowed adopted children to trace their birth mothers. Happily the two women gelled immediately and became good friends.

“I can never be Clarissa’s mother because she has one already and we can only ever have one mum,” said Juliet, adding: “But Clarissa will always be my daughter.”

While writing Perfectly Imperfect I decided it was going to the first of a trilogy featuring three generations of women from the same family. Books two and three followed automatically, almost writing themselves.

With Perfectly Imperfect being Juliet’s story, book two Living Life Backwards: The Continuing Story of the Two Js features daughter Clarissa setting out to find her Italian birth father.

Book three The Girl with Long Red Hair: The Two Js Plus One stars Amy – Clarissa’s daughter and Juliet’s granddaughter – who went to Naples to find a gorgeous Italian man of her own. Did history repeat itself?

And who are the Two Js? Well, they are Juliet and June, who met at school aged five and remained lifelong best friends. The story of their remarkable friendship is featured in book one but also spills over into the rest of the trilogy.

In the 21^st century few remember – or understand – the trauma suffered by decades of women whose only ‘sin’ was becoming pregnant while unmarried. Many of these women were scarred for life after being forced to give up their newborn babies for adoption.

It was while I was writing book three that I realised the importance of that notebook I unearthed while I was decluttering. The stories that emerged from those scribbled notes are women’s history within living memory. They must never be forgotten.

*I write under the name C J Taylor and the books can be found on Amazon and Kindle and also Waterstones online. Book three is due to be published in June 2026.

Photo Sotheby’s

1. Sue Tilley is a member of Advantages of Age and she was also the model for the painting The Sleeping Benefits Advisor by Lucien Freud which is now one of his most famous paintings. Sue is retired now but very active on the design and run-a-quizz night front in Hastings. Hence it’s no surprise that the Hastings Observer featured her this week in report about this painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet - part of the sleeping quartet - which is up for sale at Sotheby’s and they are expecting £35 million. What can we say - that’s the crazy art market for you. But happy for Sue herself to be taking centre stage.

2. This is something that a lot of us are facing. Ageing alone. In other words, getting older and needing care and support. Are we preparing? Are you preparing? As featured in the Wallstreet Journal. This is something that a lot of us are facing. Which is in part why Jane Duncan Rogers and I have set up a Zoom call for June 15th. The dilemmas involved in solo ageing.

   ‘Amy Kant initially thought she should name a power of attorney about 10 years ago after caring for a dying friend. She still hasn’t appointed someone to do it.

   The 65-year-old is single with no children, and bound up in that choice over who should make financial decisions on her behalf are other big questions that are often intensified when aging alone. How to handle eldercare? Estate planning? Where will she live in her later years?

   Kant had long cherished the freedom that came with being single. She prided herself on doing headstands in yoga and walking 5 miles a day. But lately being single has felt like a struggle, and not just because of the weighty financial decisions hanging over her head. Back surgery and a heart valve replacement in the past few years have turned her condominium outside Boston into a recovery ward.

   Kant is among the millions of Americans learning to navigate aging alone. Roughly 10% of the more than 125 million adults ages 50 and older in the U.S.—or at least 12.5 million people—are solo agers who live alone and have neither a spouse nor a child, according to an AARP analysis of census data. It’s a growing demographic hitting both genders, driven in part by climbing divorce rates among older Americans and a rising number of adult children becoming alienated from their parents.’

   

   3. One of our members alerted us to this new Australian book. And there was some kickback - after all we’re not a group that likes being told what to do as the title is How to Dress for Old Age. But a debate still happened. Some people felt they were slipping and wanted to bring out their dapper suits again, some were happy with monochrome and others were the colourful kind. One of the authors' fathers has gone into grey track suit mode at 86, the other's mother takes the colourful approach. I take the flower-in-the-hair approach...What about you?

4. Camp Out - campout.live - is a great small festival taking place in Herefordshire next to the Bridge Inn Pub from Aug 6 to 10th. who used to run the Big Chill instigated Campfire Convention - campfireconvention.network -a few years ago for progressive thinkers about the world and how it could be as well as the pleasure seekers.Only about 200 people. I'm running a poetry writing workshop. is running a constellations workshop. Jamila Signore is giving a sound journey workshop. Would be lovely to have more AofA people along!! It is camping. Although we have found ourselves a yurt to rent that's already put up!

5. If you want to do this - please sign up. Jane Duncan Rogers and I are offering a conversation about care, our future care, in response to a post that I put up where it was evident that not many of us had really considered it. And there was a lot of putting our heads in the sand! June 15th .... 6 45 to 7 45pm.... Quite a few said you wanted to but haven't signed up. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../lets-talk-about-care-and...?

6. One of our members said this story made his heart sing. Was so happy to hear that. Thank you World Service.

   ‘Mama Nike was one of 15 wives. When she left her husband to make art, the other 14 wives chose to follow her...

   Artist Nike Davies Okundaye - better known as Mama Nike - grew up in an area of Nigeria where polygamous marriages were common.

   The women in her family were makers of traditional adire cloth. From the age of six, Mama Nike’s great grandmother, mother, and aunt taught her how to spin, weave and dye.

   “I didn’t know it was my own future food,” says Mama Nike - because, despite her family’s craft, money was scarce.

   At the age of 13, her father decided to marry her off to someone who already had several wives.

   But her great grandmother wanted her to choose her own marriage - and so did Mama Nike. She escaped from the men who had come to take her away, and trekked for five days back to her village.

   “It’s the biggest risk I ever took,” she says. “I didn’t care if I died.”

   She arrived home exhausted and covered in bee stings. Even so, her father tried to marry her off again. This time, Mama Nike ran away and joined a travelling theatre, until police arrested her and brought her back.

   Eventually, she agreed to marry a well-known artist and musician from Oshogbo, a town renowned for its artistic community.

   She used her sewing and embroidery skills to make costumes for her husband’s band - while trying to make her own art.

   “The men didn’t want a woman to be an artist. So, I worked in the night, and worked for them in the day,” she says.

   Her husband went on to marry 14 other women.

   Tradition demanded those who were already wives accept each new marriage - but Mama Nike says they didn’t always want to.

   On one occasion, the husband took the women to a church where they were denied food, water, or access to their children.

   “By the third day we said, ‘Bring the wife, we’re not jealous anymore.’ Our mouths were like boards - dry,”.

   She says living with her husband made her feel “like a lion with no teeth. You have no power.”

   She began to teach her co-wives traditional adire making skills, and soon, each of them was able to make their own money.

   Sick of her husband’s control and abuse, Mama Nike left him as soon as she’d saved enough to buy her own place - and the other wives chose to follow her.

   She opened her first formal gallery in Oshogbo in 1986.

   She is now an internationally renowned artist, with a huge gallery in Lagos where she teaches others and makes her own colourful, beautiful art.

   https://bbc.in/4v9xBcM

Leslie and brother, Gerry, at Lake Norman

A day and a half in my life—centuries beneath it.

For the best part of Saturday and Sunday, I kept a lot of my thoughts and feelings to myself. But I only had 24 hours at Lake Norman, so after an off-kilter lunch and an almost too-perfect lakeside dinner at two of its many restaurants, half my time was up, and I had to ask:

Where is everybody? That’s how the conversation started in earnest.

Before that, our time together was filled with fun and exuberant exclamations, inspired by being in a new place, fine weather, good company, and a valued reunion.

My brother Gerry and I always have a great time together. He was heading down from upstate New York to Lake Norman. He’d lost his little house in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, to Hurricane Helene and was curious about what Lake Norman might offer. I’ve been in Brevard nearly three years now, and haven’t seen much of North Carolina beyond it—more of South Carolina, actually: Greenville, Charleston, Folly Beach—so I was keen to meet him there, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d make it.

At the end of the month, I will be turning 67. Four weeks ago, I started a six-week challenge to lose some stubborn weight and body fat by my birthday. Some guy online promised results if we stuck to it. I’ve tried before—but this one seemed different. I was 99% cynical and 1% hopeful—but I committed. Beyond that 5% body fat, what else did I have to lose?

The workout required focus, and in week two, pushing through the last sets, one small lapse triggered an injury that stopped me short. My back has always been my weak spot; I usually need a tune-up once a year. This time, it needed more. Two sessions with my wonderful therapist weren’t enough. Up until the day before I was due to travel, I was still in pain and unsure I’d be able to drive. But I packed, willed myself toward better, woke early, and got on the road—about two and a half hours due east. I love my brother. I don’t see him often. And if Lake Norman didn’t work for him, he said he might look closer to Brevard. I had a stake in this.

Nothing is alluring about the name, Lake Norman. It lands like a thud, nothing romantic, maybe the personification of a body of water is what draws people in droves. We all know someone named Norman.

Who doesn’t love a Norman? Urban Dictionary defines Norman as ‘a regular dude trying to survive in this terrible world.’ Photos online were impressive, and there was clearly a buzz about the place, so I understood my brother’s attraction to it. My only reservation was that it wasn’t really a swimming lake, and Gerry and I both love to swim. We swim together whenever we can, and the fact that he was looking for a place on or near lakes down here in North Carolina was an exciting prospect. Let’s go see Norman.

I kept a lot to myself that day. As I neared the area and hit traffic on the highway, I already missed the peace and quiet I’d left behind in Western North Carolina. Within minutes of arriving, something felt off. All very new. A corporate feeling to the place. Lovely, clean, manicured, but vacuous. Man-made —that was the word that kept returning. New builds everywhere. Space for more. But where was the old? What had been here before?

Heading down to the water from traffic-laden West Catawba Avenue, the road winds past an apartment complex and parking areas to reach Hello Sailor, where we met for lunch. Very busy, verging on the chaotic. We felt invisible until my unmissable hand gestures and a few deliberate hellos caught a server’s attention. We remained in good humour, but the experience warranted some criticism — even the name, Hello Sailor, with its mid-century modern beach club vibe, felt a bit forced.

By evening, after dinner at Eddie’s, another lakeside restaurant with hour-and-a-half waits for outdoor seating, we went looking for ice cream. The creamery sat in one of those live-work-play communities—clean, walkable, thoughtfully designed. Everything in its place. Sterile. Faux, even.

Where is everybody? I wondered. Everybody was lakeside.

Lake Norman, North Carolina’s largest man-made freshwater lake, covers 32,000 acres and has more than 500 miles of shoreline. It stretches across the towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Mooresville, Denver, Sherrills Ford, and Troutman. They call it an inland sea. It is, undeniably, beautiful. And people have built their lives along its edges.

Ice cream at Two Scoops was good, but we were the only two in there.

I said it out loud this time, “Where is everybody?”

“That’s the name of a Twilight Zone episode,” Gerry remarked. “Look it up.”

I did. It was the very first Twilight Zone, from 1959. How about that? We enjoyed the remarkable trivia as we worked through way too much ice cream, happy to see a few others trickle in and out.

That night I had a very bad dream. Gerry had to wake and check on me—I was screaming. Most of the details did not bear repeating, but the feeling hung heavy: disturbance, violence. When he asked, I told him cryptically: “I was being bludgeoned by a dull instrument”.

After we found breakfast—without the long wait—we went to Lake Norman State Park. A massive lake where swimming was prohibited, even wading. Plenty of people, but it was too quiet. The place felt controlled and eerie. I found myself unsettled by the contradiction: water everywhere, but no one in it. A lake you couldn’t enter began to feel like a mirage. And just beyond—vast, expensive, lakeside homes—not beautiful to my eyes—and oddly hollow. Not a person in sight. The passing speedboat could have been driverless. The cynic in me imagined a life inside one of these starter castles: a woman in a pristine kitchen, nibbling carrot sticks. Nails and hair, perfect. Never cooking. On her phone, making reservations. Everything maintained. Nothing lived.

I’d had enough. I was ready to leave. But this question persisted—where was the old town?

“Let’s look it up before I go,” I said. And when we did, we found our answer. It was under the lake.

Before it was a lake, this land was home to generations of the Catawba people. Beneath the water now lie 19th-century mill villages, flooded farmland, forests, cemeteries, old bridges, abandoned roads, a summer camp, even a plane wreck—a whole landscape submerged. I felt it before I knew it. In that instant, the unease I’d been feeling made sense. The disconnect clicked right into place. Lake Norman was built on what had been erased.

And it isn’t the only one. Across the ocean, there is Tryweryn—a Welsh village drowned to create a reservoir for Liverpool in England. A community, its school, its cemetery, forced beneath the surface.

My family’s history is underwater, too. My great-grandfather’s farm was sold to New York State. It was flooded to create the Neversink Dam.

Three words:

Never. Sink. Dam.

A name that reads like a promise.

Or maybe a prophecy.

Houses may sink; history does not.

And this is what we’ve been talking about.

1. Positive News - one our favourite news sources - reported on an erotic garden at Chelsea Flower Show. We loved the idea but found the reality a bit tacky. What do you think? Creating a space where you can talk about intimate subjects is great. And then, I started thinking - what about an AofA Chelsea Flower garden.

‘An erotic garden broke taboos in London

There were raised eyebrows among the rhododendrons this week as a garden created by a sex toy company won an award at London’s Chelsea Flower Show.

Aphrodite’s Hothouse, “an immersive houseplant studio inspired by love, lust, beauty and desire”, is a cheeky horticultural statement from award-winning botanical designer James Whiting and the sexual wellness brand Lovehoney.

Inspired by Aphrodite and Eros, the Greek gods of love and desire, the studio heaves with lush plants and sensual symbolism. It’s all rather racy for the usually prim Chelsea Flower show, but it has a serious mission: to make conversations about sex and intimacy as natural as talking about the roses.

“Hothouse is designed to spark curiosity, challenge expectations, and celebrate pleasure as something natural, playful and culturally relevant,” said Lovehoney’s Jo Connarty. “If we want to change the conversation around sex and sexual wellness, we can’t keep having it in the same places.”

It’s a message that seems to have resonated with the garden winning a coveted gold medal at the show. Said Whiting: “Gardens should spark curiosity, break a few taboos and make people stop in their tracks.”’

Image: Lovehoney

2. Continuing with the erotic theme or in this case, the distinctly non-erotic theme, we laughed with poet Brian Bilston as his invention. This is Hardchore. Indeed.

3. Do you dare to talk about care, yours and mine? I put a post into the group wondering whether people had thought about their future care. They hadn’t. So have set up this Zoom on June 15th at 6 45 til 7 45pm so we get the opportunity to talk about care. Do join us.

Get your tickets here. £5.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../lets-talk-about-care-and...

4. One of our members, has a new film out with the older physical theatre group, Grand Gesture and it’s called The Hempen Jig. Go along and see it and join in the piracy.

   

5. The BBC reported on Anthony Eyton who at 103 is still a working artist and has an artwork in the RA’s Summer Show. ‘Some might think that your average centenarian would be content to sit back and take it easy after a long life.

   But not south London painter Anthony Eyton.

   He may have turned 103 last weekend, but he is busy preparing for this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition - the world’s oldest open submission exhibition.

   Eyton, from Brixton, has seen his work exhibited all over the world, including at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Imperial War Museum.

   He says creating paintings gives him satisfaction.

   “It’s what I do, I’m never happier than when I’m putting paint on... it’s the only thing I can do and it keeps me in touch with life,” he says.

   

   Eyton has lived in Brixton for about 70 years and often paints the local community

   Eyton’s love of art began with a drawing in his school book of a duck and a worm at the age of six in 1929.

   His classmates dubbed him Constable.

   He said art came naturally to him and he “painted hard” from the age of 14.

   Eyton, who served in the army from 1942 to 1947, is a figurative painter - he paints people, places, “things”.

   Eyton has found a new audience for his work, regularly posting with his daughter Sarah Eyton on Instagram.

   Age has been no barrier to him embracing social media, and along with his daughter Sarah, a photographer, he regularly posts on Instagram.

   “He’s very natural in front of the camera as he’s just talking to me. I use my iPhone camera,” says Sarah.

   “He loves talking about art and about his paintings and about what books he’s reading.

   “In the beginning it was less about promoting him and more about our relationship, but it has taken on many levels since then and opened up his work to a whole new level of global audience.”’

6. Love the idea of wind phones - an often old-fashioned phone that is not connected in the classic sense but instead is connected to those you love and have lost. They give us the opportunity to have chats that we wanted to have. To express our love and loss. This one is in South Shields.

My husband and I were driving, on our way to walk the dogs, when a song by Dire Straits came on the radio. We both started to sing along and tap out a beat, on knees and steering wheel. I said, “I can play this on my ukelele.”

My husband’s face was at once a study in slack-jawed amazement as he narrowly avoided running a red light. “What?!” he spluttered, “already? You’ve only been at it three months!”

‘Well, I mean, it’s only three chords,” I expand, “the rhythm bit, the strum along, is just three chords. Obviously, I can’t do the Mark Knopfler twiddly bit!”

“Aaah right,” hubby nodded as the clouds of WTFery parted and understanding replaced incredulity. “I hadn’t recognised this particular song in amongst all your other three chord strumming.”

And there is it: I am a joyful strummer, plinking and plonking my way through a surprising number of songs ranging from the aforementioned pop classic through to a bit of old school ragtime. You hum it, I’ll play it.

This musical awakening started in earnest back in December 2025. Prior to that my musical career hadn’t extended beyond playing the recorder at school and hymn practice. However, on a chilly winter day, just before Christmas - the group I swim with -held a beach party and a few of our swimmers turned up bearing not only cakes but guitars and ukeleles. We had a mini concert, singing and playing. I loved it and wanted a piece of the action so I quizzed my friend who was playing, to see if I could join in and learn. She suggested that I pop round to her house and have a go on her instrument – the baritone ukelele. Yes please! I was in (well, I would be at the end of January when my-soon-to-arrive Aussie family had departed following their month long holiday with us).

On January 23^rd, 2026, I made good on my promise to myself and rocked up at Deb’s house and, under her supervision, gingerly picked up the uke and bent the fingers of my left hand over the fret board and drew the thumb of my right hand across the strings, making a passable sound. Thrilled at my natural aptitude, I headed out to buy myself a uke the next day.

Deb has directed me to our local guitar shop, run by a pony-tailed ex-muso called Barry who didn’t blink when I announced that I was starting to learn the uke and please could I have one the same as Deb’s. Indeed, Barry knew exactly what I was referring to, fetching a lovely instrument from his workshop/backroom and telling me that he’d rig it up with a shoulder strap there and then. He also gifted me not one, but two plectrums “one standard, on Hawaiian,” (whatever you say Barry).

While he was drilling a hole (cue alarm on my face) through my uke strap, we were interrupted a few times by people coming into the shop. Barry, being a one-man band, stopped to attend to the - supplying one short-bodied guitar with mixed strings to a man who was looking to buy a surprise birthday present for a short-bodied teenager; finding some kind of “steel wrapped slicks” (or it may have been slacks. I didn’t really see what they were or understand the technical jargon in that transaction) and, finally, rooting out a museum worthy amplifier (or part of one), the ZX600 or something like that, which elicited much enthusiastic chat between Barry (a great exponent of said piece of kit) and the punter who, I sensed, really wanted something else but left the shop carrying the artifact and wearing a smile.

Having taken care of business, Barry presented me with my newly strapped uke, a carry case, my plectrums and a neat little digital tuner thingy.

Awesome.

I paid up and got on the bus home feeling that I could well be on the verge of my own Bob Dylan era.

Deb had given me a chord chart and explained how to use it (which finger corresponds to which string and on which fret) and, along with a couple of song sheets with lyrics and chords written above them, I was ready to begin. Who would have thought that four strings on a very modestly sized instrument could bring so much fun and joy into my life?

Since January I have practiced almost daily. I’ve bought myself a couple of tutorial books, signed up to a guitar/ukelele playing app and been gifted some music books with titles like ’50 first songs for the baritone ukelele’ and ‘Baritone Ukelele Party.’ Rock and roll.

I’ve been down many an internet rabbit hole, sitting on my bed in the afternoon sun, trying to figure out how to play the melody of a particular song. I got very obsessed with the tune from the 1960s children’s programme ‘Tales of the riverbank’ (turns out it’s a classical piece – Giuliani’s andante in C major (op.43, No.6) Who knew?). I haven’t cracked the twiddly bits on that either, but I can play the basic tune and that makes me happy.

I spend 30 mins working through one of the music exercises in the tutorial books and trying to resurrect my memory of reading music, and then the rest of the time just strumming chords that I’ve learned to various songs. I tend to sing along in my head because trying to get the fingers of my left hand onto the correct strings and frets and remember these, whilst learning a strumming pattern with my right hand is as much as my post-stroke brain can take right now. But it gets better each time and, surprisingly, it’s not frustrating. It feels very gentle and calm and I’m happy just to repeat movements over and over until they stick. Maybe it’s a form of mindfulness.

I’m also loving practicing with our swim-music group. It has been really good for me, learning to receive help from others and recognising that it doesn’t matter if I’m not that proficient. It is just great! There are a few accomplished musicians in the group who encourage and support the rest of us. We joke with, cajole, praise and assist one another through a variety of songs, laughing at our timing (or lack of it) and our pitch (or lack of it).

We had an Easter beach party, and our playing went down a storm with the rest of the swimmers who sang along with gusto. It was freezing cold that day. My fingers hardened into a claw so I could hardly move my left hand and when I came to swim afterwards, it was perishing. But I was seriously having the best time with friends, laughing, learning, simply being and doing something creative.

So, if you’re teetering on the edge of decision, worrying about whether you’ll be good enough, fear not! It’s never too late to try something new. You will surprise yourself.

.

Anne reaching the finishing line of the 70.3 triathlon with 10 year old grandson, Alex. Photo taken by Alex Rotas.

2025 has been an extraordinary year for me and the cherry on top was to receive the Advantages of Age Sports Star Award !

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Nine in the morning, an overcast May day, and I set off up the hills above our apartment. Rain is promised towards lunch time so I aim to be back before then. An early part of the walk is along country roads and I have donned a yellow hi-vis jacket to make my presence obvious to oncoming vehicles.

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1. This week, we are celebrating one of members, having her 89th birthday. So brilliant. Ani is a wonderful woman. Ani - who won our AofA Contributor Award last November - has a great life philosophy.

   ‘Today I am 89 years old, a new chapter begins. I have come a long way, my journey has been not just rocky, painful or smooth because life is not like that…

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Kevin Allen is a writer and Film director, best known for the Welsh Cult Classic TWIN TOWN and Dylan Thomas’ movie adaptation of UNDER MILK WOOD. He was the BBC’s first Video Diarist with the groundbreaking ON THE MARCH WITH BOBBY’s ARMY, he’s been directed by Danny Boyle at the Royal Court, starred in BBC sitcom THE THIN BLUE LINE, with Rowan Atkinson,…

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1. Delighted to see the Loud Women Festival at Rich Mix in Shoreditch on Sept 5th from 1pm.

   LOUD WOMEN is at Rich Mix London. ·

   ‘ LOUD WOMEN FEST L…

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Photo is by Ruth Rosengarten

OVER, is the story of a breakup as unexpected as it was predictable. The story is, drama aside, banal. A woman d’un certain age meets a man on an online dating app, they fall in into lust and then apparently into love too, but life gets in the way (his life) and he ditches her by email. The backdrop is the Covid 19 pandemic, …

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1. We agreed with Susan Hyatt who created this post - Madonna didn’t embarrass herself at Coachella. She exposed you.

   ‘On Friday night at Coachella, Sab…

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Brighton Crones at CroneLines Disco in Sheffield, proudly sporting their crone tee’s by Twisted Twee. Pic credit Laura Page Photography for Crone Club.

“Crone is one of those words isn’t it,” says Rose Rouse in this fab piece ‘How to be Crone As Fk’ that she wrote recently for Tits to the Wind. It certainly is. I had the phone put down on me twice when r…

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1. So excited to hear about this DJ Collective who are all Over-60 playing everything from rap to pop to soul and fu…

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Photo by Gustavo Fring

It used to be so easy didn’t it – dating, sex, and relationships? Back in the days of being 20-something, there was such a choice of men (or whatever gender you were into). If you fell out of one relationship, you could just fall right into another.

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1. This was a piece in the Washington Post - ‘In a recent episode of the popular HBO Max medical drama “The Pitt,” an emergency department nurse moonlights as a death doula for a woman with terminal…

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Photo by Peter Wallis of Victoria accepting the AofA Award.

Victoria Keen is one half of the amazing international online festival Lifting The Lid which jointly won Advantages of Age’s Grooviest End of Life Organisation, she’s also a f…

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Join us to look at what we’ve been passionately discussing in AofA’s FB group this week.

1. Jane Fonda 88, and Joan Baez 85, in this intimate, reflective photograph. They are still campaigning against Trump and against the wars/occupation and we need them desperately. I am writing this just as Trump is threatening to use nuclear weapons on Iran. We must spe…

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