OR, SPRING CHICKEN NOT JUST A TOUGH OLD BIRD!
I come to you just the day before a bit of a milestone birthday, it’s sixty-five. Boom. Well not really. I always say I’m a year older so I’ve been that for the last year. I lie about my age in a different way, sort of back to front, a year older every year.
In love with life, I don’t really care how old I am I just love living it and that involves learning and exploring day by day. Without this, as I’ve said before, I am a shell of a person and no longer able to function. I think that’s how most people are but they aren’t lucky enough to pursue walking on the wild side and this eventually leads to going to seed mentally and physically and ultimately dying from lack of input and loneliness.
Since being a little girl I explored the woods on the farm where I lived, often not coming home until I was hungry, I helped the farmer with the livestock and eventually grew organic veggies in my dad’s garden, before it was fashionable. I travelled with my dad all over the globe and later when modelling moved to Barcelona for two years and learnt Spanish ‘de la calle’ (which meant I was very proficient at swearing). I then couldn’t suffer being back in the UK and left for Greece to join a very good modelling agent over there and ended up staying six years. In these times I travelled all over for assignments through my modelling and, finally, acting in comedy films, there. The world was my oyster.
On returning to England I started my ceramic work and had my beautiful son. I moved to Soho and that’s where I still have my base. I opened a temporary art gallery and then got desperate to travel again. This time it was different I felt an urgency to go further afield and see far-off exotic places (this I believe was a premonition about what has happened to us in the last two years)
I started with Thailand and Cambodia. Then the trans-Siberian Express from St Petersburg to Beijing, stopping in Moscow, Yakutsk, Lake Baikal, and Mongolia. Travelling from China I then continued working my way down Vietnam and finally ended up in Central Thailand for a spiritual rest there. On returning to London I felt I hadn’t done Central Europe justice and covered many countries there by train and plane.
The bit between my teeth I looked to South and Central America. I went to Colombia, Peru, and Guatemala and finally hit my beloved Mexico where I would return and was to be my refuge for seven months last year.
A lot of it scary, but for the most magnificent and I always encourage my ‘old birds’ to gather their courage and do the same.
Anyhoo, I’ll add to this later for my memoirs! It’s all a bit of a rush as there have been dramas up here in not-so-sunny Soho so I didn’t get around to this at the weekend. Also, my laptop is playing up so I ain’t playing!
Old Bird Travels Solo! 