Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word Read Online Free Page A

being fifty, two hundred and fifty-five minutes under half a
     century old, I’m really not that bad. I’m really not that real, either. Tonight my hair is a dark, sleek bob. Left to its
     own devices, it would be 85 percent gray and 100 percent frizz. I’m wearing a little black knee-length silk jersey dress.
     It has a halter neck, to show off my best feature—my shoulders. Doesn’t everyone deserve a best feature? My breasts are not
     contenders (34A, almost); my nose is more Nefertiti than Nicole Kidman; my bottom I’d rather not talk about. Can I be the
     only woman in Britain who has VPL even when she isn’t wearing knickers?
    But the overall package isn’t bad. And tonight, with the help of the most extraordinary underwear ever engineered—I wouldn’t
     be surprised if it had been designed and built by Norman Foster—I have a pancake stomach, a bum that would put Jennifer Lopez
     out of business, and most miraculous of all, cleavage. People have often complimented me on my boyish figure. Tonight, at
     borderline fifty, I look like a woman. But hang on there, I’m not wearing my glasses, so I’m missing some of the important
     details—the stuff you can see only close up. I’ve failed to mention the deep furrows on my forehead and the angry vein that
     shoots from my eyebrows to my hairline, and not just when I’m angry. Then there’s the Rift Valley that runs from the outside
     edge of each nostril to the corners of my mouth. And finally, the neck. The neck that until two months ago was only a neck.
     A neck to which one never gave a second’s thought. Then boom: Overnight it collapsed into a heap, along with the chin, like
     a building hit by an earthquake, reduced to rubble.
    There comes a point in your life when you may still fit into a Topshop size 10, but that doesn’t stop your new neck from dictating
     the contents of your wardrobe. For example, it’s a complete myth that a polo-neck sweater can disguise a neck that’s lost
     the will to live. You can wear your neck flesh tucked in (but I guarantee you it will pop out), or you can let it all hang
     loose above the rim of the polo and hope small children on the street don’t mistake you for a free-range chicken. Either way
     you lose: Polo necks, along with miniskirts and flesh-bearing midriffs, are not to be entertained by a woman fast approaching
     fifty.
    I need a drink.
    “Wow!” I say as I enter the tent. It’s totally transformed. While I’ve been off to have a bath and get ready, Jack and Olly
     have been lighting the candles. At six o’clock it had looked the nadir of naffness, tacky even for a footballer’s wife, with
     its clumsy cacophony of styles. What had I been thinking, mixing Eastern exotica with American ’50s glamour? Who would ever
     put a cocktail lounge in the kasbah? Mark, the editor of
Exquisite Interiors
, one of the magazines at Global, where I work, would have had me tried for treason for less. Fortunately, he’s not invited.
     And now, in the glow of a hundred tiny flickering flames, the atmosphere has become magical. The fabrics shimmer. Mounds of
     plums, figs, pomegranates, and red grapes, dusted with icing sugar, sit in big glass bowls on tables, lending a Bacchanalian
     air. A Rod Stewart CD—Volume I of
The Great American Songbook
—plays mellow in the background.
    Jack’s already in the tent, dressed in a tux and clutching a martini. He snakes over with a big self-mocking grin on his face
     and hands me a glass of pink champagne. “ ‘It had to be you, it had to be you,’ ” he croons along with Rod.
    Some others I’ve seen, might never be mean,
    Might never be cross, or try to be boss,
    But they wouldn’t do . . .
    It had to be you . . .
    “Gorgeous, Hope. Really gorgeous. The tent, the music, the mood, everything. Even you. Gorgeous.”
    Jack’s a better person than I could ever be. For a start, he does something useful. He’s a physiotherapist. And he doesn’t
     think his work is the