The age I am: Germaine Greer

By Germaine Greer

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Germaine Greer is an Australian-born writer, academic and journalist living in Britain. Since writing The Female Eunuch in 1970 she has been a prominent literary figure.

I’m 70 next birthday, but that’s not to say I know the age I am. I reckon I’m on my last dogs; when Michael and Magpie go into the pet cemetery at the south-west corner of the wood, they won’t be replaced – but not because I think I’m too old to have another dog. The real reason I won’t be entering into a new relationship with a dog is because there is no place in my rainforest for a dog. If I am ever to live there, rather than here in Essex, I must be dogless.

I decided years ago that from thenceforth I would be catless, but that had nothing to do with ageing. It was entirely a matter of how many small invertebrates, amphibians, birds and mammals my cats spent their entire waking lives destroying. I won’t have a dog in the rainforest because there are already too many feral dogs in south-east Queensland and they do a vast amount of damage to native species. I have enough to do picking the ticks out of myself without having to do it for a dog as well. I don’t expect to die before Michael and Magpie do, but of course I might. The thought does not appal.

You can see how out of touch I am with the age I am, because I think I’m going to be able to skip up and down precipitous and unstable rocky slopes festooned with lawyer vine and thronging with snakes for untold years to come. On Easter Saturday I slipped on the slimy stairs of the old house at Cave Creek and broke my ankle; if I’d done it up in the rainforest I’d still be there, or as much of my bones as the lace monitors hadn’t decided to chew up. As it was, I could crawl back up the stairs and sit down until I got over the shock and felt able to drive myself to hospital. It’s probably illegal to drive a car with a broken ankle, but at least I know myself well enough to make sure my car is automatic and will drive itself when I can’t. The ankle is still badly swollen; the sawbones says it will be a year before it’s back to normal. At my age, a year is the blink of an eye. Because I am so old, I had to have a bone densitometry test. Bone resorption is only to be expected; I can only hope it’s not so bad that I have to endure the treatment, which is pretty rugged.

Being 70 is all about body maintenance. Missing bits have to be replaced; fraying bits darned. As the cumulative consequence of other mishaps I’ve lost all the cartilage in one of my knees,
and my left leg now wobbles when I walk.
It’s probably a few millimetres shorter than the right, but who’s measuring? I certainly
have an asymmetric gait, which is a smart way of saying I limp, but I’ve limped for years and I’ll be happy if I can only keep on limping. What I’m scared of is losing mobility altogether. My feet are now so arthritic they are twisting and swelling like popadums in hot oil. I don’t think of arthritis as age-related because I have known young people whose whole
bodies were racked with it. Now that I have it, I know how bad the pain is, and I’m thankful it has been so slow in coming. The challenge now is to learn to manage it.

Being 70 is all about body maintenance. Missing bits have to be replaced; fraying bits darned

At this late hour, for the first time in my life, I�m going to set time aside to care for my hopelessly neglected body. I am about to meet with a personal trainer whose job is to keep me upright and mobile for as long as possible. When I phoned for the appointment he asked me if I lived on pain-killers and was surprised when I told him I never take them. If I can bear pain I will, but it�s a near thing some days. I only have to read the list of counter-indications that comes in the packet with the anti-inflammatories to realise the pain isn�t that bad after all and put them back in the cupboard. It�s becoming clear to me that drinking wine is associated with an increase of pain, so I�ve stopped replenishing the cellar.

One thing about being an old lady is I don�t have to feel embarrassed any more about being clumsy and having a poor sense of balance. I�m allowed, as I wasn�t when I was younger, to be uncoordinated. I could never dance and now I don�t have to try. At school, 55 years ago, I was humiliated when the physical culture teacher called me a big ape; I�m a slightly shorter ape now and happy about it, apes being the cool dudes they are. I�d rather be King Kong than Fay Wray any time.

Life is now too short for any activity that isn�t rewarding. Following fashion � what goes around comes around for the umpteenth time � is utterly pointless. Shopping for clothes is misery. When a woman my age and shape enters a boutique the assistants turn pale and glassy-eyed. Even the man who cuts my hair has lost interest; more than once he�s sent me out of the salon to face the world with twice as much hair on one side of my head as the other. When I did a TV commercial recently, the make-up department had to completely recut my hair, out of consideration for the product, you understand, not for me. My looking like a bag lady was not what they wanted, but most producers don�t care.

If I eat too much in the evening I can�t sleep, so I don�t cook big dinners or eat them or go out for them or accept invitations to them. This means I�ve dropped out of the bottom of the chattering classes and cafe society. I�d rather be somewhere, anywhere else, on this most adorable of planets. I can be happy wherever there�s a patch of waste ground with a few wild things in it. I�m happiest in my scrap of Queensland. Any time, but best of all in the indigo evening, as the sunlight on the rhyolite crags above the darkening green canopy turns gold, then rose, and fades altogether, and the microbats swing overhead, the stars rush out, and the forest comes to life.

Published in Notebook Magazine

Issue: September 2008