Turning Sixty

 Earlier this month I turned sixty. 

Several weeks have elapsed and I now feel familiar enough with sixty to submit a review.

I’m not sure how many stars to give it, so I’ll work through the factors.

Pro’s

I never thought I’d still feel so young at sixty.

Learning to pace myself and to take better care of my diet, exercise and sleep – these are new skills I am acquiring and wish I’d learned earlier.

I enjoy my work, and with retirement on the horizon, much of the stress has vanished.

I have accepted who I am and have learned to be kinder to myself.

My values have crystallised, meaning I am not torn between different worlds.

Free prescriptions!

Con's

My body sometimes creaks even when I don’t know what I’ve done to cause it.

I go to more funerals now and even look forward to the tiny sandwiches.

I often do not recognise the music of current top ten artists.

 

Over all I’d probably give sixty a rating of four stars

So I’ll just submit my review now – but where to?

I shall go away and look for the metaphysical version of Trip Adviser.

What Integrity Looks Like

 

I recently attended the funeral of my 97 year old friend John.  There are pleasures to be found in the funeral of somebody who lived as long and well as he did - most especially hearing the life story of the departed person.

John’s story, told by his children, was remarkable in being entirely consistent.  His strong Christian faith led him to uphold the rights of others and to defend the underdog.

World War Two found him a pacifist.

Worthwhile work as a missionary led him to Uganda.

Marriage showed him a feminist, supporting his wife in continuing with her work as a doctor.

Fatherhood was a role he shouldered fully.

 

It is this consistency in John’s values and behaviour which adds up to the precious quality of integrity.

 

When, eleven years ago, John became confined to a wheelchair, I questioned how such an active man could bear it. Problems with eyesight meant he lacked even the consolation of reading. 

But his mental furniture came to the rescue. He knew many works of literature almost by heart and even on his death bed introduced me to a Robert Frost poem I had not read. 

He would say that he was re-reading a certain book but in fact he was going over it in his mind.

Others might grumble at being wheelchair bound, but not John.  To a man of such integrity, the long stretch of stillness each day was an opportunity.  He prayed – for his family and friends and for our church, but also for the many parts of the country and of the world afflicted by troubles.

Much missed, John is now a torch for me, lighting the way into old age.

Hag Stones

 

We just had a family weekend in Norfolk.

 

On the beach were a huge number of flints, rolled and tumbled by the tide, some smoothed into spheres, others fractured to reveal their ochre hearts. It was flints like this which influenced sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

 

My friend Carol collects flints with holes running through them - she threads them on twine and hangs them from her fence. These perforated stones were once considered magical. Said to ward off witches, they were called hag stones.

That day in Norfolk, I asked my family to comb the beach for very tiny hag stones – hag pebbles.

A long time ago when Pascoe was little and the twins mere toddlers we were all together, wrapped up against the cold wind, paddling on the beach below Kilimantringen

 

Lighthouse in Galloway, when Nigel handed me just such a pebble. Ever since, it has been my key fob.

 

Twenty-six years, however, have worn the hole broad and the stone thin, and someday soon it will wear through. Before that happens, I would like to have its successor lined up, and if possible, I would like it also to have been gleaned on a day when we were all together once more. 

Lucky then that we found one – another precious memory I can turn over in my pocket through the years ahead.

 

(Thank you so much, Andrew and Liz, for lending us your barn).

 

Show Your Scars

At Girton College, Cambridge there is a unique permanent exhibition called People’s Portraits.  The artists are members of the hallowed Royal Society of Portrait Painters, but the sitters who are the subjects of the paintings are ‘ordinary people’ insofar as anybody may be said to be ordinary.

A couple of weeks ago, I went with Nigel and my old friend, artist Mary Fraser @artbymarybee, to see the unveiling of the portrait of Sylvia Mac, founder of the organisation Love_Disfigure.

Having suffered severe childhood burns to her back and received a number of painful skin grafts, she grew into adulthood self-conscious of her scarring.  However, as a mature woman, she decided she could no longer live a life of concealment and began defiantly to display her body, scars and all, on social media.  She has opened up a conversation, changed hearts and minds and lent confidence to others with similar body-issues.

In this bold portrait, Alastair Adams, the artist, had worked closely with Sylvia to convey the image by which she is known – a woman who has defied her scars to become a proud and capable person. 

It has to be said, Sylvia is not only an artist’s model, but also a role model and very far from being ‘an ordinary person’.