June 10th, 2025Just sayin’…  

By Donna Kelly  

By the time you read this, something I just can’t believe will have happened.  I will have turned 60.

“How could this be so?” I hear you ask. “You look so young in your photo,” you  cry. Thank you, but I assure you it is true, and also that this photo is about 12 years old.

If something ain’t broke and all that…  

I am writing this two days before my birthday on May 29 so I don’t yet know  what 60 feels like, but I don’t feel like 60. Something around the 40 mark perhaps.  

The body, of course, tells a different story now and again. Lately more now. I  decided last year, turning 59, that I would work hard to become a fitter 60-year-old.  

Then I broke my wrist celebrating my father-in-law’s 80th so that put the gym off for a while.  This year, with my wrist all good, I went hard at the gym and am now suffering from Achilles heel tendinitis.

It is not the end of the world but I can sort of see it  from here, especially if I stand on my tiptoes. Makes the gym hard again.  

So I am stumbling through the 60s goal posts a little worse for wear. I was also  going to take a nice long break from alcohol, as you should now and again, but I think I chose the wrong life to give up drinking.

I mean, I have to deal with Kyle on a daily basis.  Celebrations, or commiserations, have already been taking place.

I am one of  those people who like a “birth month” although that seems to have fallen on deaf ears  to those around me. Just Kyle really.

I was hoping for a gift a day but I don’t think I will even see a gift on Thursday. That’s OK, I have more than enough, and am really  at the point where I need to start giving things away.  

I remember the last few years with Mum. Every time we left her place, she would call me back in and ask if I wanted a bag, a scarf, a set of golf clubs way too short  for me, and I don’t play golf. I took them all. I guess it was her way of letting things  go.

When I think about it she might have been a bit of a hoarder. Not in a “can’t get  inside the house way” or “there is nowhere to sit down” but in a “I bought another shirt and now it’s in the wardrobe with 20 more with tags still on them”.

Maybe she was just a serial shopper.  Anyway, back to me. I haven’t yet applied for a Seniors Card, I just can’t even.  And when I am offered seniors price seating at the cinema, I still say no. Just makes it  all a bit too real.  

But we were talking to friends the other night on the phone and they shared the news that their nephew, all of 32 years, a really nice bloke, and has spent a year living  with them and in and out of Peter Mac, has now been told his cancer is terminal.  Anything from six months to two years.  That makes you think.  

So I will wake up on May 29, wish myself  Happy Birthday and start the guilt game with Kyle when he says things like “you told me not to get you anything”.

The only thing I really do want is a cake. I ordered it four years  ago and it never happened. Something called lockdown got in the way. So if this turns up I will be a happy woman. Although I am not  sure how anyone can slice it up. Just sayin’…