I’ve been thinking a lot about growing older of late, and not because I have just had another birthday, spent alone. I enjoyed Turkey, but while it wasn’t yet another roller coaster of disappointment it did highlight the fact I’ve achieved so little.
I didn’t wait for dessert, wanting to escape back to my villa, but the waiting staff approached me, bearing a cake with a tactful solitary candle. I was doing what I always do: scampering to the safety of my room and bed.
A friend said the other day, having given me a card with the inscription, ‘You look so good!’, that we only have three viable years left. Which might be true, but the thing is, I have always felt that I am close to my expiration date. I remember getting a horse when I was 25 and thinking, ‘OK, he will be dead in 20 years but by then I’ll be 45, so I won’t care about anything.’ When I was married, I was fatalistic about being cheated on in my mid-40s as I thought, ‘I don’t want him to see me when I’m 50.’
What a way to live, dreading still being alive. I suppose that’s why I have had so many cosmetic procedures (I could list them, but we’d need a gatefold). I have no beautiful daughter to wheel out and say, ‘Look what I made!’ No mortgage that has finally been paid off. No partner. No family. No security. I suppose that, recently, reading a comment posted online (I never look, just as I never glance in a mirror; someone helpfully emailed it to me), which said: ‘You look as though you should be pushed into one of the graves outside your house,’ hasn’t helped.
The news that Dr Jane Goodall, the primatologist, has died aged 91 (The Times referred to her as a ‘chimp expert’; she was on a speaking tour in the US, not sat in a care home – the image we’re usually peddled – and she hadn’t slept in the same bed for more than three weeks since 1986) made me realise what real beauty is: living a life concerned only with your passion. Yes, of course, she always looked immaculate, with a sleek silver ponytail, clad in a pressed shirt and chinos, but she shone with goodness. That type of ageless beauty is rare. Linda McCartney had it; wasn’t she more beautiful, make-up free, her only accessory a camera slung round her neck, not baubles from Cartier, than all the dolly birds, eyes like dead crows, in the Get Back documentary? The dearly departed Jilly Cooper had it: a twinkle. I think without Jilly, a columnist before becoming a novelist, I wouldn’t have my career, or my love of horses and dogs: what a legacy. When my rescue dog Hilda died, Jilly bothered to send me a card: the most talented people are always the most generous.
I’m glad I didn’t get to Paris Fashion Week. All those silly women preening, looking miserable, cold, barely able to walk in ridiculous shoes, mwah mwahing although they hate each other’s guts. Meghan’s Instagram post showed her staying in the very suite I stayed in at the Plaza Athénée: the balcony bedecked with red geraniums, its view of the Eiffel Tower. Meghan crossed the lobby, with its signature amber scent. She is unsmiling, the opposite of the gurning, waving royal as she leaves for Balenciaga: fashionistas never smile, perhaps mindful of wrinkles. The hotel, so perfect, I remember only for being the place where David 1.0 lost the lighter I gave him, blaming me for making him hurry for our taxi. The place where he ordered sugary 30-euro espressos. You can’t book a reservation for happiness. I interviewed Raquel Welch in that hotel suite. She wore her beauty like a shroud, a weight she didn’t know how to throw off, as prickly as a hedgehog, as gloomy as the interior of the Hotel Costes. Jane Goodall slept for years on the ground in a tent in Africa but I imagine that, for her, it was as deliciously comfortable as that Savoir bed I had tossed and turned in, wondering why I could never feel at home, like I belong, anywhere, with anyone.
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- I got a text! No, not from a man, from the Department for Work and Pensions. It confirmed my eligibility for the Winter Fuel Payment (as if!), but I must submit my application by the end of the day or lose out. Turned out to be a scam. Why are these people not in jail?
- I got an email! It’s from Octopus; they are doubling my direct debit. Again! I get more messages about my electricity than when I was love bombed. What happened to a bill in the post every three months?
