This is who I want to be when I grow up. Thank you to The Poet Laura-eate for introducing me to her. My order for four of Ms Athill’s books is already winging its way through the wide wonderful world of the interweb.
Nuts & Mutton
Strong opinions on life, love and everything in between
- 100 books in 2009. FAIL.
- 2010 Reading List
- Fifty random things about me
- Just the facts, ma’am
- Menage a Trois
- Sailing into the mystic realm of names
- Feed
Aw Tessa – you won’t be disappointed! Much though I admire Ms Athill I think I shall be a proper battleaxe when I am older – the thorn in the side of any developer who wishes to ruin my area, head of every committee, dressed in Margaret Ruterhford tweeds and twinset!
Me too … except for the committees. I’ll be a holy terror. #1 Son already tells me I’m only one dead husband and 49 cats away from being a mad old cat lady.
Loved this piece on Ms Athill…Now I have another book(s) to add to my growing list…and more inspiration for my own “reflections after sixty”.
ps…enjoying Sebastion Barry’s writing very much…Interestingly, it took about 50 pages to adjust my mind from “The White Tiger”…
Isn’t she a smasher? It’s either hale and hearty into my nineties or waking up dead in my seventies for me.
Just placed my order for her last book. I’m famous for reading from back to front so a fitting start to my journey into the writings of this profound woman.
Thanks for the direction.
Interesting way to proceed … I can’t wait for her most recent book, which won’t be released until next month, so I ordered the whole lot and I’ll start with whichever one arrives first …
I suppose it’s easy to say when I havent yet crested the hill and seen the slow decline into the abysse, but I look forward to one day being grey (or bald) and sitting in my comfy chair, spoiling my grandchildren because they’re not my problem and vengence never gets old.
Youth is ephemare but beauty is an ideal that has nothing to do with age.
Incontenance pants scare me though.
Me too … the very thought literally scares the crap out of me …
She’s an amazing writer, Tessa you will enjoy her!!
I try not to look ahead and just stay in the moment in my life. A few of us have joined the Hemlocks….
XO
WWW
I think you’re right, www. It would be a bitch to find you’ve got a terminal disease after you’ve wasted years worrying about getting a terminal disease … if you see what I mean. Hemlocks? Sounds interesting. I’m counting on being able to afford a one-way plane ticket to Zurich.
[...] (Hat tip to Nuts & Mutton. The Telegraph article originally appeared in last summer’s issue of Intelligent Life.) [...]
I have met Ms Athill, and heard her talk about her life, and she is as stunning in person as she is on the page. But there is one way in which I,at least, don’t want to grow old like her.
She was discussing sex recently. She said she had given it up (the implication was sometime between 50 and 60 though she didn’t exactly say when). A new partner came into her life and she embarked on a new sex life. But she was very emphatic — by the time she was seventy, she said, it was completely over.
Seventy seems young to me now…
There’s always the Germaine Greer model, a succession of toy boys as we grow older … since The First Husband is a couple of years younger, I like to think I fall into that category … and he loves being called a toy boy.
Duchess, I think we all hope we’ll have someone special to share our bed with at whatever age.
I guess Ms Athill can only speak for herself on this score and it is not always the case that this happens.
The problem is not with having someone special to share our bed, it’s all the rest of it. I sometimes think that men live in a magical world, where clean underwear, hot meals, and toiletries just appear, brought by the domestic fairy. It would be nice if they shared our bed but lived somewhere else. Sometimes I weary of being responsible for the comfort of another human being. And there’s no point telling me that I’m not responsible … I’m still enough of my mother’s daughter to feel that I am.
I’m sitting here drumming my fingers, waiting on the UPS man to bring my book. HURRY UP!!
Just thought I’d share that with you since I have no one else to tell at the moment.
Poor you! I feel your pain, because, although I got two of them this morning, by good old Canada Post, I can’t start on them until I finished the book I’m reading at the moment. It’s called The Time Traveler’s Wife and it’s a bit of a chore. Although the writing is terrific and the story is a corker, it keeps hopping backwards and forwards and I’m seriously contemplating hurling it off the poop deck into the snow. But I shall persevere a little longer, because it came highly recommended by someone whose taste in books is usually pretty good. Grrr.
Oh Tessa, I do hope you’ll stick with Time Traveler’s Wife. Tastes vary, of course, but that one just killed me. Er, in a good way.
I made a concerted effort last evening to get past the herky-jerky beginning, and I’m happy to say that I’m now totally engrossed in the story. It’s a keeper after all …