Middle Age Crazy

Oh Fern! If this is the new face of middle age, bring back blue rinses and a ...

Oh no, Fern. Not that. Please, anything but that. Not a pair of butterfly tattoos. Not on your stomach.

Not fluttering innocently across the rolling, ointment-pink lunarscape of your great Fern abdomen, pausing for a rest and perhaps a drink at lake belly button? Gazing at your navel with rapture, before taking a long-haul flight up to Hooters Hill. Oof. Let’s not go there.

Too late, readers! She really has gone and done it.

Some time around last Christmas, the 53-year-old television presenter addressed the impending matter of an encroaching midlife crisis by having two butterflies tattooed on her stomach. She really did.

What happened next? Well, obviously she popped into Claire’s Accessories for some Hello Kitty earrings and a glittery hair clip, then gave the bus driver a bit of cheek on the way home.

Come on. Grow up, Fern! You’re not Kelly Osbourne. You are lovely, bubbly Fern Britton, not gruesome, sour  Fearne Cotton. You are a crystal glass  of fine red wine to her plastic beaker of flat Red Bull. You are just not the tattooing type.

Yet while many women of a certain age might think that getting a tattoo is an incredibly doltish and teenage thing to do, Old Ferny is incredibly pleased with her new ‘tramp stamps’.

For her, they are a symbol of her intention to enjoy what she calls ‘a disgraceful middle age’. Oh dear.  Good luck with that, Fern. Although I suspect it is something that can only end in tears.

In an interview with Woman And Home magazine published this month, the former daytime presenter showed off her new tattoos as proudly as a sheepdog that had just produced twin pups.

In the accompanying photographs, one butterfly peeps coyly out from beneath Fern’s crisp white shirt, like a shy insect hiding behind the curtain at the ugly bug ball.

We can’t see them both, but I like to imagine that Butterfly A and Butterfly B discreetly cover the entry and exit wounds left by Miss Britton’s infamous gastric band operation.

As we all know, Fern is not nearly as large as she once was.

Although it was embarrassing for her to have to admit that it was expensive surgery — not five minutes of skipping and the occasional packet of Ryvita Minis — that was responsible for her five-stone weight loss.

And I suspect that it is her declining weight rather than her advancing years that is really behind this giddy development.

Work | Middle Aged Crazy

“I appreciate what you do.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“It’s good to work with someone who loves their job.”

Note to self: Wouldn’t you float on a cloud all day if someone said that to you? We all love to be appreciated, to be validated. When we look a waitress in the eye and appreciate them, it counts more than the tip. When we thank our kid’s teacher or our gardner for helping us, it lifts them up.

And us too.

You can tell a whole lot about someone by the way they treat people that might be considered “subordinate.” Employees, service workers, government clerks are easy targets for bullies and the insecure. If you have an inflated view of yourself, you are more likely to devalue those around you.

Rather, if you think that someone simply has a different job than you, you are less likely to treat them poorly. “Yes, his job is to clear the tables, but he does it to the best of his ability, what can I learn from him?”

Artists observe.

If you look at life through creative eyes, you might see people as more than someone there to help you get what you want. The waitress might be the heroine of your next scene, the old diner the subject of your photograph, the beat up car for sale the potential reclamation project.

See the world through the soul of a creation who is here to create.

Funny thing, you don’t know if the guy working at Burger King does Stand Up on the weekends, if the bank manager does fantastic art, if the motor vehicle clerk is a talented writer. It’s better to assume that everyone has some kind of spark inside.

The other side of the coin is this: the grouchiest, bitchiest, most nasty customer you deal with might be the person who needs love the most. So is the renegade child, the grumpy old man (and you when you go off on someone.) We forget that we are all just trying to get through the day. Forgiveness and understanding go a long way.

Work is noble. Some of us are lucky enough to find what we do fascinating and fulfilling. Some don’t. Some of us are artists on the inside, some of us are trying to get to our next paycheck.

We are all creations and we all deserve a little acknowledgement that we are here and we are trying, even if it doesn’t seem like we are fully involved.

Middle age crazy

Middle-age crazy

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