Julie Hayward does yoga
How not to feel good about your body: drag it along to a yoga class, early on a Saturday morning – for the first time for ages so feeling less than nimble. Make sure you’re the only person there who won’t see 40 again, or 50 for that matter. Fill the rest of the class with young, agile girls who won’t be seeing 20 for a while and viola! If that’s not enough, meet up with an ex-partner that you haven’t seen for 19 years who has absolutely no sensitivity and says things like ‘your lips and breast aren’t as big as they used to be’, and then follows on with ‘you’ve changed’ and judging by the tone of voice and facial expressions, not in a good way – do you get the picture?
My daughter and I arrived back from a trip to Israel, last time was 19 years ago (hence the ex-partner scenario) and we had lots of photos to show for it. Most people had seen them on Facebook, before I could say Jessops, thanks to my daughter and her prowess with electronic social communication (Facebook). I know, personally speaking nothing, can put a damper on an occasion quicker than those dreaded words “Would you like to see my holiday snaps?”‘ but nevertheless I, stupidly expected a bit of enthusiasm from my father, but he insisted he’d seen them. When I pinned him down and forced him to look at them, trust me I had no option, it turned out he hadn’t seen them on Facebook, he was lying to avoid looking at them. He has absolutely no interest in anything I do. I’ve just started a university course – never been to uni in my life, yet when my daughter and step mum congratulated me, I received no response whatsoever from my Dad. I swear I could walk into the sitting room, completely naked, head shaved, smeared with blood from the carcass of a dead sheep I was dragging behind me and announce that I’m returning to prehistoric times and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. The only comment I might elicit, if I was lucky, would be ‘mind you don’t get blood on the carpet’. He’d probably offer me a cuppa and a Rich Tea biscuit and ask if I had enough money for the bus journey.
