The cost of old age
 

Getting old is an expensive business. I trail clouds of doctors behind me, all of whom have to be paid occasionally very large fees. I have, or have had recently, a general practitioner, a cardiologist, a gerontologist, a nephrologist, a respiratory physician, a neurosurgeon, a gastroenterologist, an ENT doctor, a dentist and an optician. I also spend more on pills and potions at the chemist than I ever do on beauty products – that’s pretty obvious – and the only reason the hairdresser hasn’t sent me bankrupt (apart from COVID) is what has proven in retrospect to be a fine choice not to dye my hair and stay grey.

Because for me getting old included getting fat, I’ve also spent small fortunes on new clothes, despite purchasing them from – as I’ve said before – less than high class stores. I am very acquisitive when it comes to cheap clothes and have done some COVID shopping on-line. So I now have racks of very large shirts which I can wear and other racks with very small shirts which I can’t. The fact that I can’t go out wearing my nice new shirts is a problem; on the day lockdown ends I shall emerge as a (fat) butterfly from my COVID chrysalis and model my purchases outside.

I shall, of course, have to buy new earrings to match my new shirts; since I had my ears pierced at the age of 72 I’ve been purchasing new earrings from market stalls and car boot sales and anticipate continuing on this course as the sort of jewellery I purchase is not ruinously expensive. And because buying new earrings is FUN!

My other expenses are my hobbies, indulged in far more now I’ve retired. I patchwork (expensive fabric and classes), embroider (expensive kits) and have projects on the go in needlepoint, creative stitching (very expensive), basket weaving and knitting (not so expensive). The cancellation this year of the Craft and Quilt show has saved me hundreds of dollars but denied me the pleasure of wandering around for an entire day and visiting a kaleidoscope of stalls with fabrics, buttons, embroidery threads, needlepoint and embroidery kits and more fabrics!

Let me talk some more about fabric. There’s a saying I’ve heard from patchworkers: “She who dies with the most fabric wins”. Your collection of fabrics is called your stash and is principally made up of “fat quarters”, quarter-metre fabric lengths cut in a particular way, not cut across the bolt from selvage to selvage. (The selvage is the “self-edge” where the fabric is gripped by the machine used in its manufacture). Patchwork shops from all around the country have stalls at the craft fair with boxes full of fat quarters standing on edge – a cornucopia of colours and patterns and utterly irresistible.

Apart from fabric, my other collecting passion is threads of all different types, colours and textures. I have boxes of them, stored in what originated I believe as tackle boxes for fishermen – plastic boxes divided internally into small cubes.

Other expenses associated with increasing age are book purchases. Since I’ve owned a Kindle I’ve bought literally hundreds of books this way and I also buy “real” books from time to time. Given my difficulty in remembering what I’ve read, you would imagine I’d stick with the same books and read them over and over. But the stunning variety of books available to you on a Kindle is as enticing as buying fat quarters from the craft show.

Fortunately, I have no interest in bling so my spending isn’t in jewellery shops. Nor is it for multiple-thousand dollar shoes or handbags and certainly not for the even greater expense of couture clothes.

I am perfectly comfortable in my Katies shirts reading my Kindle books or doing my embroidery or patchwork and glad I still have the eyesight to do it all.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations: Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of western civilisation: “I think it would be a good idea.”