It's weird.
You start to wonder if you are imagining things. The mental tick list comes out. Did I say something stupid? Have I done something wrong? Is it just me? Is my skirt tucked in my knickers again?
I know you are now imagining me in front of a class of 30 five year olds who have stopped listening because of a wardrobe malfunction but I'm talking about women in their twenties. I have suddenly become an invisible irrelevance to this particular group.
I wonder why it happens.
I was trying to think about how seriously I took the menopausal women I worked with when I was in my twenties. At first, I struggled to remember and wondered if they had not been on my radar, then I remembered wonderful women, like Elsie. Her husband was the grand Elk of a Masonic lodge and she worked full time, looked after her grandchildren and did charity work. Then there was Ann, who gave me several, funny and useful parenting tips many years before I needed them. I hope they never felt I was rude to to them. I hope I didn't roll my eyes out loud every time they spoke.
Did I secretly laugh at these women with their jersey dresses, elasticated waistlines and comfortable shoes? Did I chuckle as they told me they'd seen and done it all before?
It is true that I am turning into that cliché. The woman who says 'mum' things, such as, "Aren't your feet cold?" to the young man in the coffee shop without socks on. I'm confusing places that begin with the same letter; excitedly texting my daughter to tell her that something she reported on had reached the BBC news only to get a text back saying, "Winchester not Windsor." I talk to myself out loud. All the time. When it comes to time, I'm suddenly struggling with the 24 hour clock.
"What's the time?"
Looks at phone, "8.22. I mean Twenty past six."
I'm technologically incompetent. My laptop refuses to do something but when a young person does exactly what I've done, it works first time. I find myself watching Sky Sports when I'm in the house on my own because I can't work out how to turn it over. If someone suggested going out drinking and dancing in stilettos (are they still a thing, or am I showing my age?) I would run faster than the gingerbread man. I have a wardrobe full of beige cardigans;
actually, I don't own a single beige thing because I am basically taupe in colour and so I would disappear completely but my friends do.
I like gardening, knitting and the Archers (I know, I've always liked those things but I was precocious). I'm tired and I look exhausted but in my defence it is December.
The thing I've noticed about life, is that it's cyclical. I realise that this is not a new revelation. Living with days, nights and seasons should have taught us that. However, in the West, we stubbornly cling to the idea that time is linear. We think we can control it; manage it with our lists, schedules and plans. We think about the future more than we consider the present or the past. In Eastern cultures it is the other way round and respect is given to people who have been on the planet longer because time is a cyclical phenomenon. Things happen repeatedly. They look to the past for clues about the future. When I was younger I bought into the linear time model completely. I thought I could control it with lists and plans but it turns out that you can't. You still get older and life keeps repeating on you, like a bad tuna, onion and cucumber sandwich.
Warning! When I am an old lady I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin sandals and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and run my stick along public railings and make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain and pick flowers in other peoples gardens and learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat and eat three pounds of sausages at a go or only bread and pickle for a week and hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry and pay our rent and not swear in the street and set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers. But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So that people who know me are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.