ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER
One thing always leads to another. One of the many interviews that I have done has lead to a learned fellow coming up to do a podcast about ageing, with me, the nonagenarian, doing the talking! He thought it was very good, and a week or so later I received a request from him…would I consider being interviewed by a well-known woman in New York who was putting a book together on aged women achievers. ‘Of course,’ I replied. It led to a marvellous conversation with a charming lady who wanted to know all about the four main books that I had written…especially the last one about ‘Gardening in Your Nineties, the sequel to Sex in Your Seventies.’ She had also interviewed two other women who were in their eighties. One was a playwright who was in the throes of having her play produced in New York; the other was a writer of children’s books who was about to have her fourth book published. So I was in very good company, to say nothing of the interviewer herself who was a remarkable person (and almost out of her seventies.) I mentioned that I would just love to sit and chat to the other three, and all concurred with the idea. My interviewer loved it that I said I endeavoured to remain cheerful even in difficult times, and that my mantra was ‘If you don’t use it you lose it!’
MY BREAKFAST COMPANION
If I am engrossed in reading something (perhaps The Bulletin?) he will let me know he is there. Oh yes! He is impatient for me to notice him, for he wants to be fed. Not later, but now. This instant. I know he is not popular with bird lovers. They say he frightens off...
MEDICAL ASSISTANCE, NOW AND THEN
What a difference a few decades make! When I was a growing girl in the city, our doctor lived a few streets away. He practiced from home, and would make a lot of house calls; needs must, because in those days just prior to WWII, there would be only one car to a...
TONSILLECTOMY
My little grand-daughter had a tonsillectomy last week. She has recovered well. It reminded me of my own experience when I was five. After contracting the dreaded diphtheria when I was three (read about it in my book ‘ Gardening in Your Nineties’), I suffered from...
TO END… OR NOT TO END…
I cannot quite understand it. Here is this woman, 86 years old, very capable, well educated and articulate, good company and in good health, but who is flying to Switzerland next week to have herself euthanised. No, I don ‘t quite get it. Now, I know she says she has...
A CHILD OF THE DEPRESSION
When I say that I am ‘a child of the Depression’, most folk know what I mean. It tells them that I do not waste anything if I can help it; I buy hardly anything if I can do without it; and I get great satisfaction out of tastefully using left-overs that are in my...
A COLLECTION OF MUSINGS
AMY COLLINS | sexinyourseventies.com AMY COLLINS Mum was always a good and interesting listener. And I would bring home any newsy anecdotes from my work at the hospital. I was looking after ex-servicemen from WWII, who were suffering from lung cancer...in the surgical...
FAIR EXCHANGE
The doorbell woke me from my midday nap. I groggily answered the front door. The pleasant looking young man smiled at me. ‘My wife and I were going past your place,’ he said, ‘and we noticed all the oranges under the tree. I wondered if you could spare a few? They...
YOU ARE JUST STARTING TO LEAN A BIT WHEN YOU HAVE TO BLOODY-WELL DIE!
That’s what my father used to say when he was in his eighties. And now I am at least THINKING it. Yes, it is true. It sometimes takes a lifetime to really understand some issues...or someone. Perhaps it is because when one gets older, one might have more time to...
VALE BARRY HUMPHRIES
What a great entertainer! He has enabled us to enjoy such mirth! Such talent! He will be missed. Years ago, when my daughter Katy was a teenager, we were having a day at the Brisbane Exhibition. We had not long passed through the gates when I almost bumped into this...
THE SILVER THIMBLE
We were leaving the district. Leaving the farm that had been home to four generations of my father’s family. The Great Depression still raged and times were tough for a small dairy farmer of 1937. They would try their luck in the city. A share farmer was arranged, a...