I got up one morning recently after having had influenza and then moving house,

I looked in the mirror and saw my mother’s cool green eyes staring back at me. I could see they were paler and smaller than mine and a little too crinkly to allow me to apply the usual eye makeup that I had worn for years.
However as I stared, with my face so close to the mirror that it began to steam up, I realised it was actually the expression in my eyes that answered the question of whether I could get back onto the other side of the stream where lightness and vitality signalled middle age.

That particular day, with the question on my mind I put on my middle age uniform of jeans and a sweater and combed my perfect artfully highlighted caramel and golden bob and set off to walk to the park with my youngest grandchild.
Blonde, blue eyed Gideon was already a faster runner than his Granny at two years old and needed to be watched every minute. He was very precious to me as he was the baby, the youngest grandchild in the family, as all my children were getting older and leaving their baby years behind them..

As Gideon ran along beside me, a grey haired lady with a shopping trolley who was probably not much older than me smiled and said to him,“Gosh, young man you are tiring your mother out today.” Usually a comment like that would have made me smile with pleasure but today it made me start to wonder about the ageing process in the modern world……..