Growing old curiously

Two excerpts from one of Maureen Lipman's recent columns in the Guardian really appealed to me. The first soothes me with fabric talk...

"The kids laughed at me this week when I mentioned the word Moygashel. They'd never heard of it and accused me of making it up. I told them it was one of the words bandied about in my childhood home all the time. My father was in tailoring so there was a frequent backdrop of phrases like: "Well, of course 'e's going potshop! He ordered it in cavalry twill and when it came in, workshop had done it in gabardine. No, we've none left... unless we do it in barathea and hope he won't notice the difference."

My mother was also a rampant materialist. Rare was the day when she didn't have a swatch-based decision to make before sundown, concerning a choice between the moire with the gimped edging or the doupion with the slight watermark that wouldn't show, or the grosgrain with the slub trim..."

...and the second with the appealing possibility of retaining a spontaneous and curious nature in old age (aided and abetted by the bus system):

"My iconic friend Elsbeth had her 95th birthday party last week... We heard that each morning Elsbeth waits by the bus stop near her home. If the no 9 comes first she goes to the Royal Academy and if the 19 comes first, the National Gallery. You don't have to be a seer or a sucker to see that it's her endless curiosity that keeps her alive."

Guardian: Maureen Lipman, May 15, 2006