_{Author Virginia Ironside}

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Extract 1 from 'No, I don't want to join a bookclub'

Virginia Ironside’s new novel No! I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub, is a humourous take on ageing (think grumpy old woman meets Bridget Jones) which follows the intimate thoughts of a feisty 59-year-old retired art teacher who decides for the first time in her life to keep a diary. In this extract we read part of the entry for January 15, her 60th birthday…

Michelle gave me a huge box of white chocolates which unfortunately I can’t eat because white chocolate is the only thing that gives me a headache, and Maciej gave me a weird ornament of a cat, with two great gobs of red glass for eyes, which is absolutely hideous.

Unfortunately as he’s the cleaner I’m going to have to have it on display day and night. Aren’t I an ungrateful old toad. I was touched, all the same. And the phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

“Do you feel any different?” asked Lucy, anxiously, when she rang.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I feel absolutely marvellous. It’s clear now that I was born to be 60. And to be honest, I can’t wait to be 70.”

When she was 17, my mother wrote in her diary: “I have an absolute horror of old age nowadays; every old woman I meet, I think: ‘That’s what I’ll be like soon.’ I always feel uncomfortable and unhappy when I hear someone say ‘What right have old people got to interfere?’ or ‘I hate old people.’ And I hate to hear someone say ‘Oh, she’s ancient!’ about someone of 35. When I’m 35 I shan’t like being called ancient. Old age is a beastly thing. Why must we get old, why can’t we stay young for ever, it’s so beastly to feel the days slipping past and not being able to stop them.”

But I couldn’t disagree more. While other people hide their heads in their hands and groan: “Oh don’t! How can it be that we’re all so old?” I am hugging myself with glee thinking: “At last, I can hold my head up and, instead of saying in a lowly worm kind of way, ‘I’m old and I’m cowed’ I can shout (à la James Brown): ‘Say it loud! I’m old and I’m proud!’” (De De! Deh!)

I always remember people saying, when I gave birth to Jack, that I should be “proud” of myself. I never got it. Giving birth didn’t seem anything to be proud of. But I am proud of being 60. I feel I have achieved such a lot just to have got here.

Extracted from No! I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub by Virginia Ironside. Published by Fig Tree on September 28 at £12.99. Copyright © Virginia Ironside 2006. You can save money by buying it online

This article was created: 23 October 2006.
This article was last edited: 23 October 2006.

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