Why mother makes 90 the NEW 80
My mother, with astonishing grace, gained 90 years at the end of February. Primarily she is a gardener, as well as unofficial superintendent of the beauty spot known as Lopwell Dam near Plymouth, where she has lived for 58 years. She remains absolutely a working woman. ‘I really am 90 now,’ she said at 10pm on her birthday, that being the hour of her birth.
‘You can’t be 90,’ was the usual reaction. ‘Surely you mean 80.’
‘I feel like some kind of freak,’ my mother said. But for her, as for many, 90 really is the new 80.
Food with a twist at the Treby Arms
Six months ago, I asked, ‘What do you want to do for your birthday?’
‘I leave that to others,’ she said grandly. That meant me.
‘You’ll wear me out with all these parties,’ she said, when finally I presented my new scheme. How about lunch for 15 at the Treby Arms, Sparkwell in Devon where the chef won MasterChef in 2012? She goes there quite often. Pudding might come in a Kilner jar and the venison is infused with chocolate but my mother loves the adventure and the good quality.
For her plentiful London relations and friends, I secured the Secret Garden at Shoreditch House for a second lunch. This vast post-industrial private club on Hackney’s borders might not seem the obvious choice. Members are generally in fashion, art or the media, under 40 and dressed in black. But Aunt Sue had had the first 80th birthday there two years ago, so why not the first 90th?
The third party I suggested, for friends and neighbours in the immediate locality of her home, was initially blanked. But as the day grew nearer, the plates began to shift. It wasn’t just happening, 41 guests were coming to tea. They wouldn’t fit in the house, so my mother booked the wonderful Old Pump House cafe run by Jayne Plant, directly opposite.
When I was a child, the building was full of whirring, pumping machinery. So, on Sunday 23 February, we launched out for the cafe in no particular clothes. The guests poured in. How they work, when hostessing, these figures whose training was in the 1920s and 1930s. My mother never sat down. A small boy wanted a party bag: more lovely scones, please!
A strict edict had gone out: No presents, no speeches. My mother doesn’t care for self-importance or what she calls ‘gush’. But the guests weren’t having it. They brought pots of jam, flowers, beautiful pieces of pottery. I made a little speech, saying that my mother had retired from the job of laying out the Communion wine in the church 20 years ago on grounds of age but now was back doing it. She lobbed corrections as I went along, then thanked everyone for coming.
The Treby Arms lunch also went well, despite the Treby’s Gone Carrots pudding, which my mother had wanted struck off the menu, not because it comes in a flowerpot, but because she’d had it before and not liked it.
Lopwell Dam, near Plymouth
The Shoreditch House lunch for 40 came last. We got there in advance. ‘Far too hot,’ my mother pronounced: so they switched off all the heaters. The Secret Garden, a private space on the top floor of the enormous building, looked enchanting and suitably rustic with its bare board floor and bare brick walls. The sun streamed in through the Plexiglas roof. The guests began to arrive. Aunt Vaudine was thrilled – by the street entrance, which suggests a dump, the grim cement workhouse stairs, and the ‘shed door’ into the Secret Garden – ‘It’s no Palm Court,’ she declared, delighted.
For the third time in a week, my mother was circulating in a magenta jumper and tweed trousers, with a bright scarf, the one concession to glamour. I only ever saw her as a magenta flash. She’d been in Shoreditch at the end of the war, with my grandmother, trying to help the bombed-out East End. Now, at 90, Shoreditch had come round again, its post-industrial squalor or ‘dirty chic’ lovingly preserved and my mother and her guests, many of a similar age, completely in the swim, absolutely welcoming the novel arrangements, such as all three choices for each course being laid on the table at once so you could help yourself to everything or nothing.
As the party drew to a close, we spilled out into the rest of the club. The sun was beginning to set nostalgically over Shoreditch. Although it was merely 1 March, international figures in their swimming costumes were hurling themselves out of the changing huts and bolting as fast as possible across the chilly outdoor concourse and into the heated pool. Summer beginning before it ought. How right.
Thomas with his mother. Photography by Nigel SpaldingFor once my son got it just about right. I see now that I had two parties in former industrial buildings, which adapt very well for their new purpose. I like it that they don’t try to conceal what they once were. The Old Pump House, near my home, did indeed make a fair bit of noise when operational until the 1980s. The Treby Arms, where I had one of my birthday lunches, was a modest village pub that closed, then reopened and expanded from small beginnings. My friends in their 80s are much taken with the ‘experimental food’ in flowerpots, et cetera. I didn’t worry too much about what to wear. Years ago, older ladies wouldn’t have been seen dead in trousers. Now we’re all wearing them because they’re so comfortable. I also had my nuns’ shoes, as my old friend, Miss A, calls them.
I wasn’t really in Shoreditch at the end of the war. I think it was more like Hoxton. It was very poor. I served dinners and helped with the Christmas party at what was called a ‘settlement’.
The youngest party-goer at any of my 90th birthday events was two. I was always the oldest. Years ago, a friend said that she’d never enjoyed any birthday as much as her 90th. Now I know she meant it.
‘You can’t be 90,’ was the usual reaction. ‘Surely you mean 80.’
‘I feel like some kind of freak,’ my mother said. But for her, as for many, 90 really is the new 80.
Food with a twist at the Treby Arms Six months ago, I asked, ‘What do you want to do for your birthday?’
‘I leave that to others,’ she said grandly. That meant me.
‘You’ll wear me out with all these parties,’ she said, when finally I presented my new scheme. How about lunch for 15 at the Treby Arms, Sparkwell in Devon where the chef won MasterChef in 2012? She goes there quite often. Pudding might come in a Kilner jar and the venison is infused with chocolate but my mother loves the adventure and the good quality.
For her plentiful London relations and friends, I secured the Secret Garden at Shoreditch House for a second lunch. This vast post-industrial private club on Hackney’s borders might not seem the obvious choice. Members are generally in fashion, art or the media, under 40 and dressed in black. But Aunt Sue had had the first 80th birthday there two years ago, so why not the first 90th?
The third party I suggested, for friends and neighbours in the immediate locality of her home, was initially blanked. But as the day grew nearer, the plates began to shift. It wasn’t just happening, 41 guests were coming to tea. They wouldn’t fit in the house, so my mother booked the wonderful Old Pump House cafe run by Jayne Plant, directly opposite.
When I was a child, the building was full of whirring, pumping machinery. So, on Sunday 23 February, we launched out for the cafe in no particular clothes. The guests poured in. How they work, when hostessing, these figures whose training was in the 1920s and 1930s. My mother never sat down. A small boy wanted a party bag: more lovely scones, please!
A strict edict had gone out: No presents, no speeches. My mother doesn’t care for self-importance or what she calls ‘gush’. But the guests weren’t having it. They brought pots of jam, flowers, beautiful pieces of pottery. I made a little speech, saying that my mother had retired from the job of laying out the Communion wine in the church 20 years ago on grounds of age but now was back doing it. She lobbed corrections as I went along, then thanked everyone for coming.
The Treby Arms lunch also went well, despite the Treby’s Gone Carrots pudding, which my mother had wanted struck off the menu, not because it comes in a flowerpot, but because she’d had it before and not liked it.
Lopwell Dam, near Plymouth The Shoreditch House lunch for 40 came last. We got there in advance. ‘Far too hot,’ my mother pronounced: so they switched off all the heaters. The Secret Garden, a private space on the top floor of the enormous building, looked enchanting and suitably rustic with its bare board floor and bare brick walls. The sun streamed in through the Plexiglas roof. The guests began to arrive. Aunt Vaudine was thrilled – by the street entrance, which suggests a dump, the grim cement workhouse stairs, and the ‘shed door’ into the Secret Garden – ‘It’s no Palm Court,’ she declared, delighted.
For the third time in a week, my mother was circulating in a magenta jumper and tweed trousers, with a bright scarf, the one concession to glamour. I only ever saw her as a magenta flash. She’d been in Shoreditch at the end of the war, with my grandmother, trying to help the bombed-out East End. Now, at 90, Shoreditch had come round again, its post-industrial squalor or ‘dirty chic’ lovingly preserved and my mother and her guests, many of a similar age, completely in the swim, absolutely welcoming the novel arrangements, such as all three choices for each course being laid on the table at once so you could help yourself to everything or nothing.
As the party drew to a close, we spilled out into the rest of the club. The sun was beginning to set nostalgically over Shoreditch. Although it was merely 1 March, international figures in their swimming costumes were hurling themselves out of the changing huts and bolting as fast as possible across the chilly outdoor concourse and into the heated pool. Summer beginning before it ought. How right.
…AND MOTHER’S VERDICT By Tamsyn Blaikie
Thomas with his mother. Photography by Nigel SpaldingFor once my son got it just about right. I see now that I had two parties in former industrial buildings, which adapt very well for their new purpose. I like it that they don’t try to conceal what they once were. The Old Pump House, near my home, did indeed make a fair bit of noise when operational until the 1980s. The Treby Arms, where I had one of my birthday lunches, was a modest village pub that closed, then reopened and expanded from small beginnings. My friends in their 80s are much taken with the ‘experimental food’ in flowerpots, et cetera. I didn’t worry too much about what to wear. Years ago, older ladies wouldn’t have been seen dead in trousers. Now we’re all wearing them because they’re so comfortable. I also had my nuns’ shoes, as my old friend, Miss A, calls them. I wasn’t really in Shoreditch at the end of the war. I think it was more like Hoxton. It was very poor. I served dinners and helped with the Christmas party at what was called a ‘settlement’.
The youngest party-goer at any of my 90th birthday events was two. I was always the oldest. Years ago, a friend said that she’d never enjoyed any birthday as much as her 90th. Now I know she meant it.