Three Cheers for Middle-Aged Women!

 In the past week I have seen two new movies with the main characters played by middle-aged women – I am in shock, well Halloween is on the horizon I suppose.

Joking aside, how refreshing to see first Lesley Manville in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris and then Sally Hawkins in The Lost King.

Mrs Harris is incredibly put upon by her numerous employers. To them she is merely a cleaner, but they trust her with keys to their houses and all manner of secrets besides. She goes about her duties with a smile, always thinking of others. Until one day, with a bit of financial good fortune she decides to fly to Paris and buy a Dior dress. Not quite as simple as she suspects, lugging an empty suitcase with her and expecting to complete her purchase in time for her flight home.

The story started as a novel by Paul Gallico, who co-incidentally wrote the novel of the Poseidon Adventure, useless fact I know, but I found it intriguing.

There wasn’t a REAL Mrs Harris, although many of the characters working at Dior are based on real people of the time.

Anthony Fabian the director of the latest film adaptation says in Town and Country magazine “The key to this story is that it is magic realism, so it has to have an equal dose of magic and reality. If you go too far into magic, you won’t believe it; if you go too far into the realism, it wouldn’t have that uplifting fairy tale quality.”

The Lost King is a true story about Philippa Langley’s determination in searching for and eventually finding the body of King Richard III in a Leicester City car park. The film is also told with much magical realism as Langley interacts with the deceased monarch who sits on the bench outside her bedroom window. He only speaks to her once she has asked him a pertinent question.

Just like Ada Harris, Philippa comes up against great hurdles in her quest. She is not an esteemed academic and she dares to question authority, believing Shakespeare’s account of the king is grossly unfair Tudor propaganda. The Richard III Society are seen as a bit of a crackpot bunch but it is their crowdfunding that really gets the project underway. Only once the excavation is successful do the University get fully on board.

With a bit of Googling I have just found in the Telegraph that one of the academics is vowing to sue the Hollywood producer for their reckless portrayal of him. Boo hoo!

I am not interested in what’s totally true or not, the important thing to me is that both films are great stories of tenacity with inspiring female leads of an age that is usually unrepresented. Here are two “invisible” women who have the audacity stand their ground – horray!

Mrs Harris has a more sugary ending, I came out of the cinema euphorically happy, just as you should at the end of a fairy tale. With The Lost King I admit I shed a tear as Philippa continued until the bitter end to battle academia and the bigwigs with money who only wanted the prestige. She wanted to find her King and put the record straight.

Mission accomplished ladies – now three cheers for us middle-aged women everywhere!

And while the world is listening, let’s tell our own stories.

The non-dating dilemma

Earlier this week I updated you on my #Stoma66 challenge progress so it’s only fair I update you on the other “project” I have on the go - the online dating.

You might think because I’ve gone all quiet perhaps I’m playing my cards close to my chest and enjoying a whirlwind romance away from prying eyes…. Hahaha

No such luck, sad to say the online “dating” hasn’t even produced one date. And this week’s potential matches are guys I’ve already looked at and rejected.

I’ve given up with “liking” anyone as it never seems to be reciprocated. Maybe I don’t really know the rules of this game.

I toyed with the idea of writing a message to a would-be poet, possibly even in verse to try and get a favourable response.

But in his profile, he said he imagined eyes meeting across the aisles of a supermarket and ending up frolicking midst the salad leaves.

Hmmmm – that’s not quite how I envisaged our beginning.

For me, we’d meet in a bookshop, somewhere between thrillers and romance. What first caught our attention was that we’d picked up books each other had already read. The meeting of eyes and minds an unexpected bonus.

Conversation would flow naturally as we discussed plot twists and much-loved characters, we’d recommend a book for each other and swap numbers arranging to meet in the near future, over coffee, maybe even dinner to discuss the stories further.

I’d dash home, devouring every word of the book he had chosen especially for me. Imagining him as the complex but sexy male lead character. I’d fall in love with every line.

Our once upon a time meeting would progress – hopefully concluding with an inevitable Jane Austen style happy ever after, a few minor ups and downs along the way but somehow even from the start we would know the trajectory our lives would take.

I thought online dating was the answer but maybe I just have to hang around in bookshops instead!

The thing is I thought actual dating might be fun, meeting new people, going out to new places, expanding my horizons with fresh experiences.

Turns out in the last few days I have filled up my diary with lunches and outings and I’m not sure if I can fit anything else into my social calendar.

At this precise moment in time of writing I’m content and happy with life, solo or not, of course this could change as quick as a click of my fingers.

Strangely this was my exactly mindset when Andrew left a note for me asking me on a date. Happy single with no time of inclination to invite a man into my life.

Perhaps the perfect man is right around the corner… I’ll bump into him, spill my orange juice, discover he actually OWNS a bookshop and have a surreal experience in his kitchen – hang on that’s the plot for Notting Hill.

But that all worked out in the end … and to quote some other favourite romantic films….

“… everything will be all right in the end. So if it is not all right, it is not yet the end.”

And how will it end?

“It’s a mystery!”

(Bonus points if you know where both quotes come from!)