Older

After my experience with the doctor in the menopause clinic who wanted to pump me full of drugs, I am still reflecting on my apparent loss of libido. According to the doctor this "lack of chemicals." 

It is strange to think something like that can have happened without my knowing – it’s like the theft of something I hardly used, still a shock when you realise it’s gone. You look at the space where it used to be and wonder about it, but it doesn’t mean a great deal and you vaguely hope you might just have mislaid it somewhere.

I toy with myself by thinking of things that used to excite me. There is a moment of anticipation – then nothing. Like pressing a button or flicking a switch, expecting a power surge which doesn’t happen.

I now look at people in a very detached way, and observe beauty very coolly,  easily, without any envy. That has died too and I’m glad to lose it.

One trial of getting older is that many people you know, old and middle aged, die off. But this also  includes the people who remember your most embarrassing failures.

The Daily Telegraph has a whole Saturday spread on what they call “predatory” women, single women thy call “lone wolves,” and married women who try to snatch innocent husbands.

It was very like a Daily Mail piece with reckless chariacature and deep mysogeny.  Perhaps if  us “lone wolves” were invited out to dinner by married couples more often we wouldn’t be so desperate. There is of course another syndrome they ignore  the married ladies who think that if you talk to their husband for more than a minute you are “after” him. That is often horribly insulting.