The plus side of ageing

And a suspense thriller

Welcome to my head - a round up of what I have been thinking about, reading and eating.

Thinking

There is a lot that is a bit shit about ageing - my skin sags and looks like crepe paper, my eyes don’t work like they used to, sometimes I creak when I move, sometimes I just don’t move, it takes me ages to find my birth year on a scroll down menu, pop culture is becoming more and more inaccessible, everything is loud, people around me are getting older (and sicker) and sometimes I feel invisible - although that is not always so bad

But for all that’s not so great about a tiring body and a mind that still thinks the 1980’s were twenty years ago. there are a few big highs. Take for example seeing your oldest friend’s daughter get married.

I do not have many childhood friends - maybe because I immigrated or maybe because I was a difficult child, maybe a combination of the two. My oldest friend is someone I met at uni. Our friendship spans almost 40 years and includes some huge life events - many of them really difficult and tragic, many of them filled with laughter and happy times, many of them filled with delicious food and a great love of sugar - all of them important to me. When she got married I was her maid of honour, when I got married she was heavily pregnant and for some reason I was led to believe heavily pregnant people could not be in a retinue - sorry to both my sister and my friend.

Many years have passed, we have lived on different continents and now both in Australia but in different cities and my friend has the two best daughters in the world - both of them smart and accomplished, strikingly beautiful and exceptionally kind and warm. The first married a couple of years ago and the second celebrated her wedding this weekend. I was lucky enough to be at both weddings and even luckier to realise what a privilege and a blessing it is to see the children of people you love celebrate their own milestones.

When I attended my friend’s wedding we were was younger than her daughters are now and we probably thought we knew everything, we were worldly in a way only 20-somethings can be; our minds full of hope and excitement, our skin full of collagen and elastin. But attending her daughters’ weddings some thirty odd years later made me happy in a way I didn’t even understand in my twenties.

Sometimes ageing is hard and creaky and really rather tiring, but sometimes it allows you perspective and grace and a chance to witness things that make you feel hopeful and happy in a way that only maturity and a passing of the years allows. Being old enough to know what has happened in the past and to know at the same time that so much still lies ahead creates the space for wonder and deep joy at the happiness of others.

I loved being the maid of honour at my friend’s wedding but I really cherished being at the weddings of her daughters. I strongly recommend celebrating young people with old friends.

Reading

If I had seen that this book was advertised as a suspense thriller I don’t think I would have picked it up. I am not a thriller type of person and I am in enough suspense just waiting to see if the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning… but I read Jacqueline Bublitz’s first book Before You Knew My Name and even though that was probably also sold as a suspense thriller I loved it.

I think the reason I really lean into her books is that the writing is so passionate and intense I almost feel like I’ve met Jacqueline through the pages and I understand her anger at the system, at the fact that crime does not start and end with the victim and that sometimes men (mostly) do terrible things to women. The story told in the book - of a woman haunted by the ghosts of murdered girls - is fictional but the facts about crime, assault and the long tail of trauma are not.

This is a book that I could not read before bed because it was pretty bloody frightening for a hyper-sensitive person like me, but I carved out time to read it in the day and I am so glad I did.

If you are a true crime fan, if you like an intricate and passionately told story and you want to read a great book - this one’s for you.

Eating

This week I’m talking food for the ears - stay with me because it’s still food based.

I am a terrible sleeper, I can’t stay asleep and I can’t stop having bad dreams. Sometimes going to bed is literally a nightmare. I’ve tried to get my husband to read me a bedtime story every night but he reminded me that we are 56, so instead I have turned to the comforting sounds of strangers telling stories in my ears in the form of podcasts.

This week I found (via Broadsheet) a podcast called Pepperoni Pizza Dreams where the host Julie G reads restaurant menus in a sleepy voice. Delicious sounding food and a comforting voice to lull you into sleep is just the recipe I need. You can find it here if you think it might be something you’d like.

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Thanks, as always, for reading all the way to the end.

See you next week.

Lana