Age 62
Musician, Mother, Grandmother
Unable to play violin at front door – due to a broken wrist
Conducting
There are plenty of positives, like having sex without having to worry about getting pregnant and not having periods. I didn’t have a particularly bad experience of menstruating, but I still hated it. Now when I look at young women, I think ‘Oh God they might be having a period’– how dreadful – at one point I was a teacher in London - in Stoke Newington – and I can remember the awful business of trying to get time to go the loo and do what you needed to do, in between lessons, and that horrible flooding – that I’d sometimes get – not very often. I can’t say I’ve ever been sorry to get shot of that, not being able to have children is quite sad, but I’ve been there done that I’ve got grandchildren who I absolutely adore, and I just love that. There’s a kind of ‘taking stock’period, I think, when you first finish.You have this recognition of a different phase starting. It was a huge relief, that that was over, there wasn’t going to be this huge expectation anymore, and I think I’m more confident now There’s a lot more ‘I don’t give a fuck what people think about me’and you realise you haven’t got forever, and there’s much more of a sense of grab the moment.
The negative side is that I got osteoporosis, and that’s had a huge influence on my life so at the moment I’m wearing a sling because I’ve got two fractures in my upper arm, and that’s been quite difficult, and I can’t play the violin – so that has a massive impact. When I was first diagnosed, when I was about 54, I did my left wrist, I broke it three times, the last time was quite bad and I had to have a plate in and some surgery to repair the damage, at that time I was working full time as a violinist and I had to stop completely.That was hugely concerning for my friends, and my sister, and some of my close friends said we’re going to come round and sing, and I said ‘I aint singing, I’m not gonna sing’ but they said ‘come on it’ll make you think about music and you can make arrangements and we can sing in the front room ( pre covid days obviously – and so it started with about six of us coming round, and then we decided we’d do it once a fortnight people said ‘can I bring a friend’ and people came, it went from 12 of us in the front room and it was starting tog et a bit crowded, and there was wine, and we started to get braver with the things we were doing, and I realised some of them were really good singers. I hadn’t ever thought that. Some of them weren’t very confident about their abilities but they wanted to do it and the lovely thing was female friendship thing – was they were coming for me –because they were worried about what would happen if I couldn’t play There were so many people who wanted to come and join us that we started to hire the Macintosh centre, and 56 people joined, and one of the reasons why we are not meeting at the moment is that I don’t know how to tell people they can’t all come. One of the nicest thigs about it for me is that there are women who had never sung, it’s a collective, we pay £3 each. There’s no pressure, I think pressure on women is a huge thing.There’s a lot of pressure on older women, you might have grandkids, children growing up, and you’re starting to have aging parents. So you’re starting to be a carer at both ends.