Matron of Horror

44 year old Liz sets the tone for this post

I tell you starting your forties is a freaky experience. One recurring leitmotif that rears its head every so often like that beast in the trash compactor onboard the Death Star in Star Wars every so often is this: that I should have sorted myself out by now.

I have compiled a list of things that if you asked anyone they would say someone who is forty should have sorted out by now:

Forty year olds should have an established career
Forty year olds should have a pension instead of a Direct Debit instruction for the National Lottery
Forty year olds should be able to phone a tax office without physically shaking
Forty year olds should be able to talk to other forty year olds in suits without feeling like a wee girl
Forty year olds should have had the braces removed from their teeth by now
Forty year olds should not be contemplating actually wearing the sequined shorts given to them by their sister (who also bought herself a pair)
Forty year olds should not be anyone’s bridesmaid
Forty year olds should not be urging their forty-two year old friend to wear the sequined shorts she bought online
Forty year olds should know how to programme the central heating
Forty year olds should be able to have a disagreement with a client on the phone without giving the phone the Vs after the receiver has been put down.
Forty one year olds should stop still saying that they are forty when they are not.

I am failing on all those fronts. This year I am to be a shivering, brace wearing, pensionless, career-wanting, possibly sequined short wearing(at least at one point on the Henny) bridesmaid to my friend, Sezza, the Demon Bride of Peterculter. Along with my similarly misguided (but, crucially, five years younger sister), Misssy A. My mother keeps on insisting that we’re Matrons of Honour, but really, where’s the honour in that?

Elderly bridesmaiding aside, the pension thing is the most confusing. Meeester keeps on saying things like “I’ve looked at my pension and we can’t afford to be alive past sixty. Let’s do a Sid and Nancy…which one do you want to be?” Or “I’ve booked us a consultation with that Dr Kevorkian for our Golden Wedding Anniversary. Put it in the diary and book the flight to Switzerland whilst our credit cards might still be authorised….” , or, chillingly,“It appears I’m worth more to you dead…”.

I look at my own pension portfolio through semi-closed fingers. It’s full of lots of little frozen company pensions from jobs I spent five or six years in each paying out about a fiver on maturity. It felt like I paid a lot in at the time but the cash appears to have gone through some kind of evaporation vortex. I’m totally buggered.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. I remind myself that I’ll probably just be like my late gran, and her expensive cigarette habit aside, I should be able to live cheaply by never buying myself any new clothes given that “It’ll be a waste, because I’ll be dead soon.” Not even sequined shorts reduced from £25 to £5 that my elderly sister who I share a room with in the home has also bought herself.

And as for being one of those old ladies who can’t afford to put the heating on because they are too poor to pay their bills, I’ve got no worries. Because I still won’t be able to programme the bloody central heating anyway.

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