Reasons to Hate Warning by Jenny Joseph

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When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:18 (nineteen years ago)

1. http://www.redhatsociety.com/

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:19 (nineteen years ago)

She's just ripping off Gogol Bordello, isn't she?

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:20 (nineteen years ago)

2. It reminds my mother of her Auntie Nettie, who wore lots of bangles and planted lightbulbs along the garden path, and that she aspires to be like Auntie Nettie and she will therefore be wacky.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:20 (nineteen years ago)

3. The last verse really is awful.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:20 (nineteen years ago)

In any case I understand that John Reid is currently pushing through legislation which will outlaw such behaviour for good.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:22 (nineteen years ago)

Here's hoping!

4. There can be no doubt that old ladies as described in this poem smell of wee.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:22 (nineteen years ago)

I'm thinking of the old lady who used to hang out in front of Chelsea Town Hall in the '90s and distribute racist leaflets (Lady Bird or something I think she was called) and she looked exactly like that (and smelled like that too).

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:24 (nineteen years ago)

Actually, I think it's great. My mum love that poem and used to quote it at me all the time. Almost all of us will get old. And half of us will be OLD WOMEN!!! oh no, shocking!

Older women are increasingly erased in our society. I'm for anything that makes them more appealing.

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:25 (nineteen years ago)

WHEN I GET OLD, I WILL MAKE DARN SURE I LOOK NOTHING LIKE THIS
http://www.redhatsociety.com/events/photos/rhs2006/big/RHSDay2006_01.jpg

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:26 (nineteen years ago)

APPEALING, HOW?

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:27 (nineteen years ago)

When I am an old man I will wear purple
And hand out copies of London Lite for £8 an hour
Because my pension will be worthless.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:30 (nineteen years ago)

xpost
Marcello - you mean Lady Birdwood, a thoroughly unpleasant individual and one who i am quite sure smelled.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:43 (nineteen years ago)

I'm also pretty sure she got done for distributing those leaflets, which - in another life as a archivist for a race relations department - i once had the dubious pleasure of filing.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:50 (nineteen years ago)

That's it, Lady Birdwood. Ghastly woman.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 7 September 2006 11:53 (nineteen years ago)

When I am an old man my nose will be purple
And I will agitate for a new kidney
While drinking Yukon Jack out of an ostentatious flask

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:04 (nineteen years ago)

eww eww ewww, the Red Hat Society.

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:07 (nineteen years ago)

It's not my particular cup of cyanide, but it's better than that terrible "I am not dead I did not die" thing which is so bad even Robson and Jerome made a song out of it.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:11 (nineteen years ago)

Older women are increasingly erased in our society.

Baby boomers are old enough to join Seniors Club if they want to. They have to be the most informed people ever about retirement and the issues that comes with getting older, and they continue to do their thing, they are knowledgeable enough to avoid being "erased", I think, so the psychological distress you are talking about have to be decreasing from now on, no?

― S. (Sébastien Chikara), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:26 (nineteen years ago)

Queuing with the old folk
There's and old man with a wicked smile
Not through smug politeness
He's doing it in style

No savings book or flannel slacks
No "Pardon" when I heard them ask
Just a vodaphone and a filofax

When I'm 64
I'll dream on

They all bore the milkman
Stop him for hours at their front gate
He just sits and thinks
I'll make the bastard wait

No dribbling or incontinence
No longing for the old sixpence
Just smoking weed till age makes sense

When I'm 74
I'll dream on

They all save for Blackpool
Just for the cheap companionship
Meanwhile he counts pennies
For a different trip

No smoking pipes and drinking bitter
No eyeing up the baby sitter
I'll trip up kids and I'll drop my litter

When I'm 84
I'll dream on
When I'm 84
I'll dream on late
I'll dream on
And I'll whisper late

You're in your nineties Arthur
Be careful with your back
Exercise your muscles
I'd rather Jack
I'd rather Jack

― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:45 (nineteen years ago)

When I started seeing those red hat ladies coming into my diner, I thought they were a CULT and I tried not to wait on them.

― Abbott (Abbott), Thursday, 7 September 2006 21:25 (nineteen years ago)

The truth is much more dull and vile.

― Abbott (Abbott), Thursday, 7 September 2006 21:25 (nineteen years ago)

5. Dangerously glamorizes the social isolation of the elderly.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 7 September 2006 22:10 (nineteen years ago)

6. When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
Instead of an air conditioner,
Which is why I will die unnoticed in a fifth-floor walkup
During a heat wave, because the elevators are broken
And the whole reason I don't mind being eccentric
Is that who cares, no one comes to check on me anyway.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 7 September 2006 22:13 (nineteen years ago)

7. Embarrassingly misunderstood by certain 19-year-old girls who mostly ignore the second half and take the beginning as a way to imagine aging doesn't matter, as if it might as well say "I'm gonna be a cool grandma, I'll be doing body-shots with poolboys, nothing's gonna slow me down, WOOOOO Cabo" -- though I imagine those sorts of girls will mostly be the ones in unflattering clothes losing money in the casino, true to prediction.

8. Too often mentioned (ironically) by actually cool young women who feel weird now anyway and see something reassuring in there, to the point where you want to be all like "I know, purple, Jesus, stop thinking so much about your own identity and dignity and just reconcile yourself to not mattering and not caring, the way guys do."

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 7 September 2006 22:19 (nineteen years ago)

Roger McGough - Let Me Die a Young Man's Death

Let me die a young man's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns
burst in and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a young man's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

― Ben Dot (1977), Friday, 8 September 2006 02:07 (nineteen years ago)

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