I have a mini revelation

I’m thinking of buying a mini skirt.  My legs are pretty good.  I play tennis and do pilates twice a week so they’re strong and shapely, and if I look at them without wearing my glasses, there’s not a hint of cellulite.

I was born too late to be a child of the 60s so Mary Quant was never my fashion guru, but I did own a selection of hot pants, and in the 80s when it was all shoulder pads, red jackets and mini skirts, I was in my element. I even remember wearing a black silk cross-over mini skirt on my 50^th birthday.  And then something happened…

People began saying to me things like, ‘Oooh aren’t you brave, wearing short skirts in your 50s’.  To clarify, they were very tasteful short skirts, usually worn with black opaque tights and knee-high boots. But gradually my confidence ebbed away and my skirts got longer until they turned into trousers.  I gave away my short skirts and stuck to boot leg trousers and jeans.

Then, for my 60^th birthday, a friend took me to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical at the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End.

What a woman she is!  What terrible things she’s overcome. What horrible people she’s had in her life who physically abused her, tried to undermine her talent and destroy her success. And what resilience to keep fighting back, to reinvent herself in her 40s, and to keep wearing those famous sparkling mini skirts well into her 70s.  She knew her legs were among her best features and she showed them off loud and proud. 

It set me to thinking how easy it is to lose sight of the good things about us, and once lost how hard it is to find them again.  So in the spirit of rediscovering some of those good things about myself, I decided to go further than just buying a mini skirt.  I decided to book a spontaneous trip away.

I used to love travelling, but in the last couple of decades I haven’t done it much – too little time, too little money, too little courage. But Tina plus the determination to make the most of my life following the sudden death of my husband two months previously, gave me the inspiration to book a flight and join friends on their annual trip to a Christmas market.

Although I knew the people I was travelling with, and although we were visiting a city I was familiar with, Edinburgh,  I felt extremely nervous.  On the way to the airport my hands were shaking, my stomach was churning and I could happily have wheeled my suitcase back home. But I swallowed hard and kept going.

I ordered a gin and tonic at the airport bar – not something I’d ever do when travelling alone– and found myself enjoying the decadence of it. I know that when I’m on my game I can be good company, even funny sometimes, and so once I joined my friends I decided to breathe out, relax and just go with whatever flow they suggested.  We had a ball!  It wasn’t so much that I was out of my comfort zone, but back in one I’d forgotten I used to enjoy visiting!

The surprise came on the return journey. Rather than looking forward to the familiarity and security of home, I was overwhelmed by the prospect of being home alone. Just me and the two cats.  I had that sudden sickening flash of realisation that hits the bereaved like a smack across the face: this is my life now.  There’s no going back. This new life isn’t like a new haircut you hate but if you wait a while it’ll grow out. Or an expensive jumper that you change your mind about and take back to the shop.  This is it.  Unwanted but it.  And how to make the best of it?  How to make anything of it at all?

And then I thought about Tina and how she kept on being true to herself and how that got her through the very worst of times. So I’ve learned that I have to keep reminding myself of who I am, rediscover what it is about me that I like both physically and emotionally, and use that to give me the confidence to take on life’s challenges. With or without the mini skirt.