Ask Virginia Ironside

I long to be a granny

QMy daughter has just told me that she has no intention of having children. She is my only child, and I’m devastated. I had been longing for grandchildren and she’d make a wonderful mother. She says the world is too dangerous and unpleasant and she’s made up her mind. She’s 30 – so time is running out. How can she be so certain?

Tessa G, Brighton

AShe has no idea what she wants. Or, perhaps more honestly, she has no idea what she’ll want in the future. And nor do any of us. I suspect that she hasn’t found anyone she’d like to have children with and, in these restrictive times, can’t imagine meeting anyone she’ll love enough to want him to father her child. So this may be a way of trying to justify some situation she feels is inevitable – that she’ll end up childless. It’s much less agonising to fool yourself that you’ve taken a decision yourself rather than find yourself passively suffering. At least you feel in control. It may be that she will fall in love and her outlook will change radically. It may be that she simply finds herself pregnant accidentally. Whatever, the chances are that she will become pregnant at some point – nature can make fools of us all. But whether she will or not is not something neither she – or you – can possibly predict.

Boring organ recitals

QThe conversation at gatherings with friends and relatives is dominated by (often depressing) health problems. How can I steer conversation onto more interesting topics?

Andrew, Bristol

virginia ironside

AAndrew, what is depressing for you is not necessarily depressing for other people! For many of us, health, at our age, is crucially fascinating. I can listen for hours to accounts of my friends’ ailments – and how they’re trying to overcome them. It’s not just gossip. I learn a lot, and enjoy the empathy, consideration and thought involved in such conversations. How the body works is endlessly fascinating – as any GP will tell you. Have you ever looked into the mechanics involved in a triple bypass, for instance? Or how our digestion works? Health trumps most other topics because it includes mechanics, personal feelings and psychology – not to mention potential mortality – all in one subject. Don’t try to change the subject. Try to find something interesting in it yourself.

Family misfortunes

QHaving had a very stressful Christmas with the family, I’m dreading the next get-together, which will be at Easter. I really don’t get on with my relatives – and they don’t get on with one another, it seems. So I can’t understand why we keep up the same old rituals. We all agree it’s marvellous when it’s over, after all.

J S, Surrey

AWell, you agree on something, don’t you? And, quite honestly, if you can get through these occasions without a murder being committed, I think you’re doing well. We keep up these rituals because they’re really important. However much you don’t get on with them, you do have a bond with relations over even the oldest of friends. There’s an unspoken loyalty, deep down; a primitive connection that we often don’t like to admit to. Try to focus on your blood connections rather than on petty jealousies or disagreements. When the chips are down, it’s a relative who’ll step up to help you first, I’ll bet, rather than a friend, however old.

Desert Island Slipped Discs

QI think the idea of doing Desert Island Discs with one’s oldies is a brilliant idea. However, I’m 90 – and if even I have only very vague memories of my favourites, how would my children find them? Who for heaven’s sake sang about ‘the man with the goo-goo-googly eyes’? When I was six, I had a wind-up gramophone and only two records, Mr Bach Goes to Town and The Animals Went in Two by Two. You might just find those, but if I can never remember who sang, ‘If the nightingales could sing like you,’ who can? My husband would imitate him in the car when we went pub-crawling in our teens.

Beatrice G, Harrogate

AI’m sure your grandchildren would love to learn to sing Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)! I remember learning lots of wonderful old music-hall songs from my grandmother – including the inimitable Ain’t It Grand to Be Bloomin’ Well Dead which was macabre but irresistible. The nightingale lyric you mention is, by the way, the first line of a verse of You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me which was sung by Frank Sinatra, among many others. Search YouTube! Or get your grandchildren to do it for you. Happy reminiscing!

Please email me your problems at problempage@theoldie.co.uk; I will answer every email – and let me know if you’d like your dilemma to be confidential.

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