I am 47 today

And these are the things I love

This is me, taken at a party last year by my friend Immy on a ‘real’ camera. I’m wearing a top I’ve had since my 20s, and you can see Immy’s beautiful art on the walls.

Hello! And thank you for being here. It’s my birthday today! I’m 47!

I have been feeling nostalgic lately. A friend texted and reminded me that next year, it will be 25 years since we graduated from the University of Birmingham, and it feels as if everything has changed – and nothing too.

Then we had no smartphones – not even laptops. We had film cameras and we had to WAIT to get things developed. People didn’t do selfies (I still managed to, by pointing the camera’s lens at my face and seeing what resulted when the film eventually came out).

In 1997, when I started uni, Labour had defeated the Conservatives by a landslide. The UK economy looked good, and I was extremely fortunate to be part of the last cohort of students to go to university when tuition was free – fees were introduced in 1998 – and we had the time of our lives on a £10 night out.

It was £1 for the bus there, £3 club entry, cocktails were 50p so we had six each, we wore no coats (so avoided cloakroom fees) and we allowed £3 for the taxi home. Back then, going clubbing meant heels, padded bras, tight skirts or pedal pushers and cigarette smoke on the dancefloor.

Then I remember living my ‘best life’ before the phrase was invented - making forever friends, learning about Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and why symbols of men were so ubiquitous (the ‘green man’ at the crossing), and occasionally going to step aerobics before a night out.

I have a collection of teeny tiny sequinned tops I used to wear to go dancing in Birmingham - none of which I am ever likely to wear again - but which live under my bed, gleaming in the dark. They represent an age of alcopops, Blind Date, Street Mate, Sex & The City, landlines and library gossip.

I often look at people in their 20s and feel like urging them to relish their youth, their flat stomachs, the sense that they are just embarking on the world in a way that they can never repeat.

At a party last weekend I got chatting to two young men. One had just finished a dissertation on rave culture, interviewing people his parents’ age (my age) about life ‘then’.

The other was studying sociology and described himself as a feminist as he pondered why carers and their children were allowed to go to the party for free, while others paid. I was blown away by the way they expressed themselves confidently but humbly and how they asked questions about my life too. They seemed thoughtful, and much more conscious of the world than I was at that age, when getting pissed seemed to be my raison d’etre.

As I turn 47 today, we are in a terrible era of war, of climate change, of financial trouble, of our every online move being tracked, of political shifts. We are on the brink of dramatic political change in the US, and for me the result of the presidential election will be a cause for enormous, uncontrollable elation and celebration, or it will feel like the depths of despair.

What does it mean to be living among this? How will I, and you, look back on this time? It’s hard to know the significance of an era while you’re right in the middle of it, and most of us need to focus on the day to tasks of life, the micro amongst the macro. But everything has a broader context, and the older I get the more I want to know about people’s context, how they came to be who they are and where they are, and I want to do things that are fun, while at the same time having meaning.

So this is rather a long preamble to a brief list of things I love at 47.

Dancing and movement

On Thursday night, I went to a workshop at a yoga studio, to move and to meditate. During one exercise, we had to sit quietly, close our eyes and then gradually start moving in a way that came naturally to us. I found myself holding my face, stroking my legs and feet and eventually stretching upwards like a tree. I felt profoundly grateful for my body and what it’s done for me for 47 years.

The workshop’s leader talked about doing things not just for the sake of their worldly pleasures, but for their deeper meaning, and the older I get, the more I find that movement becomes a kind of spiritual experience.

On the dancefloor at the party last weekend I really wanted to stand with my eyes closed under the disco ball and move exactly how my body felt like it - to have some kind of deeper connection to the music. I didn’t, but I might be brave enough to next time.

The earth

I’m writing this to you on Friday night when I should be in bed. It’s 11pm and I’m getting up at 3am to get on a plane, but I’m here because I love writing to you.

It’s got so late because I took some time out today to plant bulbs, one of my favourite things to do. For me planting minnow (a teeny, pale yellow daffodil) as the nights draw in is a kind of earthly pleasure, because it’s a way of giving my future self some joy. When spring comes, these little darlings will peek out of a planter at the front of my flat and hopefully bring a smile to those who notice them.

When I get back from my trip I’ll be doing more, moving plants in my garden to places where I think they’ll be happy, and I’ll be happy too.

Art

I’ve been writing a lot about art in my day job, and as I’ve dug into it, meeting artists, gallerists and industry people, I’ve found it fascinating. What is art for? I ask myself. Is it there to be beautiful, provocative, clever, funny or all of the above?

I’ve been lucky enough to go to some amazing shows, including the Courtauld Gallery’s ‘Monet and London. Views of the Thames’ exhibition, which opened last week.

It’s the first time Monet’s London paintings have been on view together like this, and in a location very close to where he observed the river from the Savoy Hotel. In a neighbouring gallery, I got to see his Antibes painting in the flesh, a print of which I’ve had in my kitchen for a long time. There’s something breathtaking about seeing something like that in real life.

Alongside being stunned by artists’ skills, what’s more important in the role of art for me is how it creates empathy, something we urgently need in this world right now.

I recently interviewed Mark Ball, the Southbank Centre’s artistic director, who told me: “Culture does have a real role in putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s what artists do all the time. They create stories about other people that allow you to have empathy.”

What brings you joy? And can you do something today that will bring a little more of it to future you?