Late Youth by Susanna Johnston

Author:Susanna Johnston [Susanna Johnston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909807327
Publisher: Arcadia Books Limited
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

LUCINDA LAMBTON

IF THIS IS BEING A FOOL IN PARADISE…

‘AGE I do abhor thee, youth I do adore thee’ – attributed to Shakespeare in the Passionate Pilgrim – are words that positively scrunch my senses with perplexity at how wrong they are. Every stage of life is surely to be relished in equal measure, and unless of course beset by some misfortune due to the galloping years, should be cheered on to the last grateful lap.

Surely the only way to progress along the passage of time is to celebrate it. It would be a sin to do otherwise.

My sixtieth birthday party was a full whack gala with hundreds of pals, some fifty children and as many dogs, all prancing and dancing together to the heart-lifting, toe-tapping tones of a blue grass band.

A giant old-fashioned marquee in the garden was festively attired with flags and bunting and with dozens of ‘Medieval’ banners from the Palio in Siena. I have had them for years, and they never fail to come in handy! There were hundreds of billowing balloons of every colour, and many with ‘60’ shrieking from their curves. They flew forth everywhere, with nine-foot high bunches swaying at either end of the delectable, teatime-treat-laden table, along with mounds of wild flowers: buttercups, may, cow parsley and marguerites. The company of hundreds sang ‘Happy Birthday’ four times. How I love that American song composed in 1935, by two Louisville teachers, one of whom – delightful to discover – was professor of education at Columbia University! To hear it is to be imbued with a sense of affection, to be enfolded by a cloak of cosiness, embraced by friends’ voices, instead of by their arms. Almost everyone said how brave it was to proclaim the six decades. One Jamaican pal wrote that she ‘ran and hid at Milk River Baths for three days and wouldn’t come out’. Three days, no doubt, of wise reflection, as against one of unconsidered, but untrammelled, joy!

I am lucky (or un-thoughtful) enough to have an ever cheerful and optimistic disposition and have never, ever stopped to think of the advancing years as being anything other than life itself. At only sixty-one, I can still crow that I have not noticed any dispiriting changes; if this is being a fool in paradise, then that is exactly what it is. Certainly it is my good fortune to be oddly immune from reality when it suits the bill, and I suppose that ageing must be the top of that bill, every minute of the day. I have been asked to write down what getting old is like, and I can truthfully say that I do not know. Yet!! On and off for the last four years, I have been battling my way through the jungles of Jamaica, discovering vast great Palladian ruins, some unseen by man for over 150 years. At one point I collapsed and was flown home, both to a major operation and to be told that I was near death but instead had blundered on, macheteing my way through life.

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