Opinion

When everything on your body heads south!

Jan 14, 2016

OK, let’s talk about where everything is heading now.

I mean that things that used to be north of the horizon (being the waistline) are now very definitely south of that region. Things that used to be north of the hairline are now definitely becoming invisible!

What was once a luxurious, voluminous, gleaming deep rich chocolaty brown mane, is now a sad, dispirited, stringy, thin mess that more resembles a very sad floor mop than a crowning glory.

Where once a luxuriant drape of fringe hung proudly from a well-defined brow line just above the eyebrows, now the brow line is non-existent or has shifted back alarmingly towards the crown.

While every effort is being made to disguise these faults, perhaps by combing a thready fringe forwards or using the time honoured comb over, nothing works that is not instantly recognisable for what it is.

A very poor attempt to halt the inexorable march of time. Wonderful, draped thick hair that hung proudly to the shoulder line, is now just a distant memory.

In its place rests a thin, straggly, limp grey mess or if you are the very lucky possessor, perhaps a light salt and pepper colour.

No more swingy locks that you can use to perfectly show your displeasure or even better to indicate your interest in another person. Such is the sad plight of the universal hair dilemma.

Now to get to the major issues. Everything else, and I do mean everything else is heading south.

Nothing is where it used to be, and in most cases there is so much more of the everything else than there used to be.

Where have those perky, tight, upstanding boobs gone to?

What are these pendulous, baggy, heavy appendages hanging from my shoulders?

Where have they come from?

How can something so delightful become so, so, odd?

How can a large part of something which should reside just on the chest line now appear to end just above the waistline?

And talking of waistlines, what happened here?

Something that one could put both hands around comfortably, now needs a two metre tape to measure.

And what is it with all of the bumps, folds and lines that appear to have suddenly materialised?

Where did all of the crepey skin appear from?

I want my bikini body back.

Sadly that ain’t gonna happen.

Don’t get me started on the hips.

What the heck happened here?

No good blaming it on child bearing, I only had one of those and everything has had about 42 years to bounce back.

Now I know that I am slow, but you would think that even my body should have managed it by now.

But no. Not a snowflakes chance in hell that this is going to happen.

So I am reduced to wearing a black, one piece boring swimsuit, where in a previous life there were minuscule bikinis, one pieces which might as well not been there, they were mainly a couple of well-placed straps.

Oh, how I loved those swimmers.

Now I am reduced to not only wearing the dreaded black one piece, but also to covering that up with a voluminous piece of cloth which looks and hangs like an Arabian tent in the desert.

Couple this with a wide brimmed hat, one which makes Princess Beatrice’s wedding creation look positively demure, dark glasses and lashings of white greasy sunblock, and you get the picture of how life has so dramatically and dismally changed.

What has happened to the svelte, sun browned, bikini beach babe of yesteryear.

What cruel being has decreed that life should have descended to such depths that I now look like a bleached, overstuffed, thin haired chook, or more accurately an old boiler, dressed in black with an Arabian tent overlay?

I have come to the inescapable conclusion that life is neither just nor fair.

I wonder if a new hair colour is the way to go, perhaps a wig,

But sadly nothing is going to change the ageing and well used body.

Oh well, I guess, to use the expression of younger friends, I will just have to suck it up!