Edel Coffey: Don't be panicking about your age - think of all the adventures yet to come
Edel Coffey: old notions be damned - you are alive, which is better than the alternative. Photo: Ray Ryan
I was in a clothes shop in Dublin last week, queuing up waiting to pay. As I stood in the queue, bored, I noticed a woman in the line beside me. She was buying a slinky magenta-pink dress. The cashier ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the dress and I stole a glance at the woman. She was probably mid-fifties and looked a bit like Michelle Pfeiffer. Ice-blonde hair, brilliant bone structure and a huge smile. She caught me looking so I told her what I was thinking — the dress would surely look fantastic on her.
She deflected, as many Irish women of a certain age are wont to do, and replied that she had a brutally honest daughter at home who she would probably run the dress by before wearing it. I suggested that maybe she shouldn’t bother asking for the daughter’s opinion at all and just enjoy wearing the dress instead. “I’d rather know,” she said. “If my daughter is thinking it other people will be thinking it too.” I had to think about that one.
