Time is on my side

After the overwhelming success of my first concert – the Beatles in June 1964 – I barely had time to catch my breath before my mother paid my sister to take me to my second – the Rolling Stones in January 1965. What a difference six months could make.

It was a metamorphosis. Not only had I traversed the timeline from primary to secondary school, I was no longer shepherded by godparents. I got to tag along in the hallowed presence of my older sister and her friend, and the friend's younger brother – in retrospect, it was almost a date. But of course I only had eyes for Mick, having also transferred my undying love from Ringo in same said six months.

I had also (thankfully) outgrown my emerald green velvet Beatle suit and this time was decked out in my black PVC Mary Quant raincoat – not that it was raining inside the Agricultural Hall at the Sydney Showground, but it was the kind of coat you had to wear rain, hail or shine. I particularly liked it when I had to pull the hood into play, with its clear panels running down the cheeks so I could see around corners. I'm pretty sure I wore my first lipstick – Mary Quant of course.

I love it that the Stones are performing in Melbourne tonight. I love it that Mick is 71 and is still strutting his stuff.

In 2009 at a Leonard Cohen concert I remarked to my son that at 74 I wanted to be like Leonard and to be able to effortlessly squat on my haunches and stand up in one movement. With the kind of honesty you only allow your children he replied, 'Wouldn't you need to be able to do that now?'

These great performers are great role models and Time is on my side, so it's more yoga for me.

Whose arm is that?

This morning I looked down at a body part and didn't recognise it as my own. I wasn't under the influence of drugs, I haven't had plastic surgery, nor have I acquired a prosthetic.

Overnight the skin on the inside of my elbow had taken on the texture of crepe paper and when I glanced at it my first reaction was, 'Whose arm is that?' Those who have experienced or are on the brink of experiencing this phenomenon won't need me to explain the concept of crepe paper. Those who haven't experienced it are probably still thinking it won't happen to them and won't be inclined to keep reading.

When I eventually adjusted to the uncomfortable reality that this was indeed my own arm, the great late Norah Ephron sprang to mind. For Norah, it was all about her neck. While I've grown used to my changing neck and face (because I see them every now and then in the mirror), for me it's all about my inside elbow.

I didn't have such a strong reaction when I enquired in a shop about a shirt with 'a bit of a sleeve' and the attendant mumbled, 'Mmm, bingo arms.' I accepted her comment and my upper arm sag with surprising equanimity, although I did a little more resistance work in the pool in the following weeks.

Now I'm smothering my inside elbows with moisturising creams. Alas, I fear it's too late to bring back their former elasticity – but I do see a missed marketing opportunity. Surely among those endless companies promoting skin products that regenerate and renew there's someone with the foresight to focus on the inner arm.

Hey, I remind myself, if my inside elbow is cause for some concern, then in the scheme of things I'm doing pretty well.

Limitless mindfulness

I'm not sure if we've just has national mindfulness week, but it sure felt like it from where I was sitting. First I read an article describing it as the plat du jour which was hotly followed by radio interviews about corporate mindfulness, advocating – among other things – paying attention to one thing at a time. I quickly applied the lesson and was inspired to mindful driving – best not done, I found, while listening to said same program. I drove straight past my destination.

Every now and then someone comes along who can dress up age-old ideas and apply them to new situations. Remember Eckhardt Tolle who caught out imaginations in the 1990s with the Power of Now? He advocated keeping thoughts in the present, slowing life down, connecting with nature and – like corporate mindfulness – warned against multi-tasking.

No doubt all the mindfulness roads lead back to forms of (prayer and) meditation, which I've practised on and off in some guise or other for decades. These days I draw on Buddhist practice and am attracted to the New Kadampa Tradition because it's accessible and easy to integrate into the everyday. 

As far as I'm concerned the more people practising mindfulness the better but it takes practice learning how to focus (I just tried to post this blog on someone else's site). It's also a fine line deciding where to focus your mind. Just this morning I saw a man mindfully texting while not mindfully picking up his dogs' poo. Needless to say, there are limitless opportunities for mindfulness in modern-day life.

Tasting forbidden fruits

Like so many of our generation, I was introduced to forbidden fruits at an early age. I had the decided advantage of having an older, precocious sister who handed me my first glass of whisky along with a cigarette. As I recall, it was when I was still running behind the television set to see where the actors were, so I was somewhat less worldly than she was.

In later primary school I sucked furiously on bamboo sticks behind the school's art room. I'm not sure I was looking for a bamboo buzz, so much as just wanting to be a bad girl smoker. I can't recommend it. Bamboo cigarettes don't ever really get going, unlike my mother's early smoking fuel – the pages of a Bible. From what I hear, they really take off – which I gather can be alarming when you're smoking in bed. I should point out that I don't think my mother was intending to be disrespectful, she just didn't have much else at hand. The same case could be made for the altar wine.

When I was about 10, said mother was reading Mary McCarthy's The Group. She hid it in the second drawer of the chest in her bedroom, under her 'slips', which is where she hid everything she didn't want us (her daughters) to find. For some reason page fifty-something sticks in my mind, but the imprecise reference is all that remains. I can no longer remember why it had to be hidden or why that page was the one I must not/had to read. Was it the sex, contraception or Lakey's sexual orientation?

Inevitably I went on to more bad girl stuff but nothing to write home about. After a long spirits' dry spell I overindulged in Bacardi and Coke in my early teens and nursed my first hangover. I regularly drank in pubs when I was underage and blithely drove for close to 10 year without a driver's licence (which I promptly got when I turned 18). Not content with country roads, I ventured out in one of the country's major – and to me unfamiliar – cities. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't inhale, or that the sexual revolution passed me by.

My excuse? I come from a line of rebels.

When did graciousness take a turn for the worse?

I can't remember when 'you're welcome' and 'it's a pleasure' slipped away, but I know that now when I hear them, they are music to my ears.

How and when did 'we' adopt 'not a problem'? When did buying a service from people who are being paid to do it start to feel like an imposition?

For most of my life it didn't occur to me that shopping or ordering in a restaurant could create such universal difficulty.

'I'll have the orange socks, thanks'

'Not a problem.'

There I am, buying socks with legal currency. I could have brought my Monopoly money with me, which could create a problem. Orange socks could be a figment of my imagination, which could create a problem.

'I'll have the pizza margherita, thank you.'

'Not a problem.'

I could have said, 'I'll have the pizza margherita with the base on the side.'

Believe me, I can come up with any number of problems if I want to.

Maybe the waitstaff look at me (or not) and think of their high-maintenance customers. The ones who send their coffee back to make it hotter and less flavoursome, or the ones who object to the snails in their salad. Maybe they are reassuring me that my presence hasn't been a huge inconvenience.

It bubbles away and I say to myself I should adopt a more relaxed approach. What's wrong with 'no worries' and 'she'll be right mate'. It's that 'don't get your knickers in a knot' attitude.

And then I turn on the national broadcaster and the correspondent signs off her live cross with the ubiquitous 'not a problem'.

What can I say? Hakuna matata.

Always look on the bright side of life

While my classmates were undoubtedly doing their homework, I'd sit with my father on school nights roaring with laughter while we watched Monty Python's Flying Circus.

It may have been my initiation into oh so silly British humour, but he was an old hand. I don't need to dig deep for memories of my parents glued to The Goon Show.

Or for family excursions to see Jacques Tati films. The only thing that upstaged them in my father's eyes was the time my mother was engulfed in the claret curtain so popular in cinemas in those days. In the gloom we hadn't noticed we'd lost her until we heard the bat-bat of her small hands beating against the heavy fabric.

While life isn't necessarily a barrel of laughs, I learnt at an early age that you could quickstep into absurdity. And what better example than 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'? The crucifixion scene turned into a song and dance act.

The hairdresser's iron will

I can be assertive. I admit it's not always my strong suit, but certainly all signs of it disappear when I'm in a hairdresser's chair. I will happily stand up to a doctor, with more years of training, than a hairdresser.

At my age, I have fairly definite ideas about how I want my hair to look, and I think I start off by articulating it well. I like a strawberry blonde colour (I even take the formula with me written on a scrap of paper), because it suits my fair complexion. I always, always wear it up, so it has to be left long enough to meet the teeth of the hair comb. It's fine, so I want as much add-on value as they can possibly muster.

I think these are straightforward instructions, but obviously not in hairdresser speak. (I should point out that there is one who is very capable of bridging the language barrier, but she is a five-hour round trip from where I am currently living.)

So boots and all; they don't bother with the art of gentle persuasion.

'No, that colour's not right. That's not the right proportions; this will suit you better. And I'm just going to thin the back here.'


'Sure', I reply meekly. 'Whatever you think.'

Result: brown hair that won't hold the hair comb. Longer-term result: a headache from the teeth of the hair comb piercing my scalp.

And the backstory? My (and I use the term loosely and inclusively) first run-in was when I was about 18 and thanks to my more assertive  sister, I finally ended up looking somewhat younger than 65. After a visit to an expensive Double Bay hairdresser in Sydney's eastern suburbs where I had a truly tragic haircut she arrived with all guns blazing and insisted they 'made good'. If only I'd learnt that lesson then.

Then there was Pierrot le Fou in Sydney's Strand Arcade in the mid '70s. I know, the name was a dead giveaway and I should have paid more attention to it. But I went ahead and foolishly said the result was boring. It took years to grow out his comeback, a split-level effect more suited to the architecture of the time.

So, what is it about some hairdressers that they have to do 'the exact same thing' (don't you hate that kind of talk) you have asked them not to? It could just be the power they have standing over you while you sit and stare at yourself in an unforgiving mirror.