Mecanopsis

I’ve been away with the family for a long weekend and must go and sort things out, but in brief, to answer a couple of people's questions on a recent blog post: this is a mecanopsis – in the above case, a blue Himalayan poppy.

How kind of some of you, by the way, to admire my infant chubbiness of two posts ago. Alas, the chubbiness is still with me (or at least, it departed for some years but has now returned), but I don’t think I’m at all recognisable from those photos. Hair is still brown on the whole, but with grey streaks at the front - it was never as dashingly dark as it looks in the photo with the bow – and it’s wavy, though the Shirley Temple look has gone, which is probably a good thing. My cheeks are still rosy (yes, I know those are black-and-white photos so you’ll have to take my word for it); I still have two eyes (brown) a nose (unremarkable) and a mouth (small). But I now look like a boring 57-year-old.

I remember Germaine Greer saying that the worst thing about being middle-aged is that you become invisible, but I quite like it on the whole – the invisible bit. It’s quite stressful to be young and self-conscious, worrying that people are looking at you. Now I know they’re not. I would probably like to look just a trifle less boring, though. But not enough to do anything about it.

Oh and - again referring to a comment from a few posts ago - Daughter 2's aspiring-actor boyfriend has done his two years at acting school in New York and has been back in Britain for a year now. But success has not so far crowned his efforts. It's not that he's not a good actor - he really is, as far as I can tell. But I fear it's a crowded profession.