AofA's Hot To Trot Talking Points

Every Friday

Every Friday I share what we’ve been talking about in our FB Group - Advantages of Age, Baby Boomers and Beyond. And our discussions are always very varied and often go down all sorts of honesty alleys.

1. This week we were wowed by Korean artist, 90 year old Kim Yun Shin who is about to go global.

   ‘Following her debut at the Venice Biennale, she is showing in London and New York for the first time.

   Kim Yun Shin turns 90 this year, and she has no plans to slow down. Born in 1935 in Wonsan, North Korea, the artist is known for her sculptures of wood and stone as well as canvas works. She has recently made her solo debuts in London and New York with a two-part solo exhibition reflecting her seven-decade artistic journey, which spans across the world from Asia to Europe and South America.

   Read more: https://bit.ly/4kcyw7n’

2. One our most committed members

   Ben Cornish
   shared this photo of himself 45 years ago and now. We were, of course, in favour of both. Ben is a juggler and often shares posts of himself in action.

3. Suzanne Noble
   is performing her hilarious and wonderfully put together - the dirty blues show on Sunday June 1st at the Green Note in Camden. Do join her and wonderful pianist, George Webster, for her great humour and songs.

‘Get ready for a night of filthy fun, as George Webster on piano and vocalist Suzanne Noble team up to perform once-banned, risqué songs from the 1920s-40s, many of which prominently feature the word ‘hot dog’. Together, they will regale you with tunes like ‘If I can’t sell it, I’ll keep sitting on it,’ ‘My Big 10″,’ and ‘Sam, the Hot Dog Man.’ These songs were originally sung by celebrated artists such as Bessie Smith and Alberta Hunter and lesser-known names like Lil Johnson and Bo Carter. Back in the day, you would have heard these songs in brothels, speakeasies, and vaudeville theaters. Prepare yourself for laughter, and if you’re musically inclined, join in the sing-along. There’s no doubt that you’ll leave the show with a big smile on your face.

4. We discussed whether it was okay these days for women to have muscles and the aesthetic of that and had it changed? Or were muscles on women all about health and longevity now?

   ‘What if you could spend fewer hours in the gym, stop restricting what you eat, and untether fat loss from the number on the scale? In recent decades, gym culture has seen a change in the winds: more and more women are taking up weight lifting, shattering the previously segregated ready image of “men sweating in the weight room, women glistening in the aerobics studio,” Lauren Michele Jackson writes. Emerging internet forums such as Reddit’s r/fitness—where women post snapshots of their weight-training progress and generous caloric intakes—were replacing the vacant perfection of editorial spreads with crowdsourced examples and instruction. The author Casey Johnston, a chronic dieter and reluctant long-distance runner, writes about this phenomenon in her new book, “A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting.” Lifting “toppled everything I knew about my body,” Johnston reports, ushering a physiological, as well as psychological, transformation that reads as nothing short of a revelation. But a preoccupation with strength can take many forms, Jackson suggests. Read Jackson’s full review. ‘https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/lBxW8H

5. And we all adored this love story by member Carli Susu -

‘Exactly seven years ago, on a Thursday afternoon, the chap by my side in this photo was led onto my boat in Brighton Marina by his sister, like a lamb to the slaughter, awkwardly clutching a big bunch of flowers, yellow chrysanthemums, I seem to recall, obviously thrust into his hands by his sister. We had a pleasant afternoon, snacking on tapas and enjoying conversation. I thought he was nice, but then forgot about him.

I had been chronically single for years at that point, after the premature loss of my soul mate Trevor in 2005. I'd had a few attempts at relationships in the interim years, mostly disasterous and draining, and by this time, I was sort of done with men, and enjoying my single life very much. I had a little flat in Ibiza, my house in Brighton, a live-aboard boat in the marina, a gorgeous son, ran my own clothing brand, travelled to exotic places, had my health, and life was sweet. Living the dream. I felt complete.

By the time, the flowers had faded, a few weeks later, the man who had brought them, popped into my mind. Despite, insisting that he would call me, I hadn't heard from him again.

So I rang the sister, my friend, and told her that, although I liked him, nothing was going to happen between us. She said that if I wanted to pursue a friendship with her brother, I would have to make the first move. As he had only left me with his email, I pinged off a swift message, saying that I had enjoyed his company on that rainy afternoon, but had been busy since then.

Within minutes, I got a reply. Yes, he would love to see me again, but he too had been busy.

Long story short, we arranged to have an outing together. It was almost summer solstice so I invited him to join me at the Longman of Wilmington for a ritual with my Druid friends and afterwards we dropped into a little festival, Zutopia, put on by those wonderful Zu Studios folk.

The festival was accessed via walking through woods and then several ripening wheat fields, and on the way back, he shyly asked if he could hold my hand. I let him. The sun was shining and everything was golden.

Dropping him off at his town flat, he again shyly asked if he could kiss me.

And that was that.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A few more magickal dates, ones filled with swarms of dragonflies, wild deer galloping mere metres from us in the Yew forests of Sussex, long beach walks, picnics where he brought herbal tea in a flask for us to share, and we became inseparable.

Dan had been single even longer than me.

Our lives had run on parallel tracks.

I'd lived, as a teenager, in a flat above where his father worked. We had similar ancestry. We were the same age. We were both tea-totaller vegetarians, and neither of us smoked tobacco. These things are important to me.

We'd been to the same festivals, and gigs, and yet we don't recall having ever met before.

I guess we were just waiting for each other.

We had both been on personal journeys of inner growth. We came into our relationship without any baggage, without any need, without any desperation, without any agenda. We joined forces purely for the joy of it, for the companionship, for the pleasure. There's a lot to be said for later-in-life relationships. There's no pressure to breed. We'd made our mistakes with others, learned our lessons, though there's always room for growth.

We're open to that.

I never thought, after Trevor's death, that I would meet anyone that could match, or even come close to what we had. He was a hard act to follow.

But Dan has shown me unconditional love, patience with my sometimes stubborn, controlling ways, has a silly sense of humour and fun, and is just perfect (for me) in every way.

He is quiet and thoughtful, while I'm impulsive and wild. We balance each other perfectly.

Although quiet, he has great inner strength. It takes a real man to be with a powerful woman like me, not to feel intimidated, not to want to shut me down as others have tried.

Plus, I think he's cute, and he flatters me daily with his attention to me. He buys me flowers and arranges surprises.

We've surrived the weird days of a global pandemic together, locked down, and managed not to kill each other.

Indeed, it made the pandemic FUN! It fast fowarded our relationship.

He's learned to love travelling as much as I do and we've worked out that in the past seven years, we'd covered the distance of the earth's circumference at least once together.

I look foward to our next seven year cycle of exploring life hand-in-hand.

Darling, Dan! Happy days! I love you eternally!

(Apologies for the soppy post. I just gotta shout it out!)

SPREAD THE WORD....THE WORD IS LOVE!!!!!’

6. And we wished Miriam Margoyles a rumbustious 84th birthday!