Elves and Old Ladies

 When I was a child, old ladies were grumpy. They’d snarl at children on buses, snap at young mothers to keep their babies quiet and stand on their doorsteps with crossed arms and disapproving frowns. Their blue and pink candy floss perms were the only cheerful parts of them. The reason that the Jenny Joseph poem hit home to us schoolgirls is that we were determined not to be ‘one of those’ when we grew up. Instead, we would wear purple, run our stick along railings and eat a pound of sausages in one go. 

Now, old ladies are grumpy. They wear purple, eat too many sausages so that they burp, fart and swear in public. Think Miriam Margoles. And they are bigoted. They have their views and nothing is changing them. 

Therefore, it is no surprise that a woman in the Royal household in her 80s would double down when questioning a dark-skinned woman where she was from. It makes for a fantastic news story. It’s good to draw attention to how annoying this must be and how it is racist because someone whose parents came from Holland (for example) would never be asked where they were from, however, we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s what old ladies do.

There are a lot of reasons for women to be grumpy and with age the grounds for crabbiness mount up.

A piece of technology I was using in class didn’t work because I had failed to ‘publish’ the class list that had taken me three days to upload. The children were very judgemental about my lack of computing skills, which is quite unfair as they managed to get us locked out of the site because they couldn’t spell their own names.

“It’s just that computers move so fast. They didn’t have computers when I was at school.”

They were shocked, so I told them about Oswald, a new exciting class computer that looked like an egg, was wheeled in on a trolley and could tell you if you’d added things up correctly, that arrived when I was in the top junior class (year 6 in their numbers).

“How old are you?”

I’m never worried about this question but I thought they needed to work for the answer so I gave them my birth year. Oh, who am I kidding? I gave them my birth year because I can never remember how old I am. I used to say 42 but that seems like too big a lie these days.

I was a little shocked to discover that I’m 96 though.

“Hmmm. I don’t think I’d be here if I was 96,” I said.

“No. You’d be on the couch.”

On the couch, being crotchety.

I can already feel the waspishness stinging at the thought of the elves. I hate the elves. Stop the elves.

“It wasn’t like that in my day. Encouraging such bad behaviour. Whatever happened to being on the nice list?”

Maybe I am 96 and it’s time to retire and sit on the couch.

In all honesty, though, I am probably just a little jealous of these young mums with energy and creativity to make a new scene every night. How they manage is beyond my comprehension. Sometimes the tooth fairy forgot to come to our house.