“Why are you staring at me?” No English woman would ever ask this directly, but we’re in a foreign country where, as you know, people do things differently. But this time I couldn’t keep my eyes off her and I felt somehow she’d noticed me too and wanted to talk. Both of you remain in uneasy silence to the end of the journey, you don’t dare venture a second look and it dies. It was one of the facing pairs and she took up the seat opposite mine. It felt like playing checkers advancing on my right up the bus and then stepping to one side manoeuvring myself towards a seat near her. We got on at different doors on a three-door bus.
In addition, she had the snuggle factor of a true granny, the thing which makes little kids want to cuddle up to old ladies and find an instant route to contentment and happiness in their arms she had it to a degree. I’ve established that I’m not young myself and this woman was older than me by at least five years but I didn’t care, the blue-grey eyes were timeless, which was fortunate as I was inclined to stare into them forever. Maybe I noticed her blue-grey eyes immediately you had to notice them eventually. Then in a flash I saw her, one of the most sensational old ladies I have ever seen in my life. In Budapest, where I live, we have long bus stops for long, articulated buses I didn’t notice at first someone standing at the stop way ahead of me. There were problems in the supply chain, some sort of disruption I waited and waited and when the supply was not reconnected, I decided the problem wasn’t with some outside body like a government I could kvetch about: the problem was with me: I had become old and unattractive.Īn ideal place for the old and unattractive to hang out in any city is a bus stop you’ll find enough of us there any day of the week already waiting glumly not going anywhere in particular. That’s the way it used to be someone up above provided love but it wasn’t being provided any more. In the morning the manna from heaven is waiting there on the ground to be collected you collect just enough and you always have enough to last you through the day, if you are not greedy. At one time it didn’t seem as difficult as this to find someone. I was nearing the momentous age of sixty-five, one chosen for me by convention and law as the hiatus point between my active and inactive life, but in one sense I’d already resigned myself to retirement, from the company of women, that is. Love far less often later in life not because of some dimming of an internal fire or a diminution of the need for love, and not because of a falling away of our susceptibility to finding an attractive other who draws us, but more because of a falling away of our own physical state which enables us to attract others. But it’s a hard fact to be faced that we fall in
It hurts writing this for many, it must hurt to read it.
Love after Sixty-Five or Life with a Trophy Granny By Malcolm Sharps