I'm old enough to know when I'm 'behaving' Old

Just so you know, I'm not going to bang on about new academic years, new and fresh horizons and new anything actually. I'd rather like to hang on to my false wish for an Indian Summer and not consider the 'moving on' feeling that a change of season always produces. Don't worry - I'm not being morose or difficult, I'm sure I'll make some new year resoultions, but right now, I'm feeling too old to be bouyed up by any sense of new-ness; generally this is not a feeling to which I succumb, so it's all feeling odd. You'll understand why when you read 'my day so far': I put the calendar page together this morning in about 10 minutes flat - I had dates for this month that I need the family to see and I somehow managed to bypass the fact that I hadn't actually done the LO until I got up this morning! It's not the greatest calendar page by any means, but I'm cheered by the colour and amazed at what necessity caused me to do! Then we went to College this morning, for Miss Dunnit to enrol. It was interesting; all human life was represented in that College this morning. I rejoice utterly in the freedom of self expression, but I've seen tattoos, piercing and 'unusual' haircuts in huge numbers this morning, and I'm ashamed to say that I caught myself gawping a couple of times and wondering if the holes and pictures will look even vaguely nice or interesting in thirty years -not cool! Interesting for me was seeing parents that I met 10 years ago at Brownies that I haven't seen since. Wouldn't have recognised their offspring if my life depended on it, but thankfully, us parents are relatively unchanged over a decade! Interesting too that having been efficient enough to write to us with a fairly specific time to enrol (Surnames A to D from 9.45am), we were a bit shocked to find that the student records were not in alphabetical order and as each student stepped up to the table, five members of staff started scrabbling through massive piles to put together relevant files. Blimey. What a waste of five people's time (and, to be honest, my will to live). Miss Dunnit had a chat and 'grades check' with two young women who lecture in two of her chosen subjects. They were warm and friendly and enthusiastic and all I could do was wish that the young woman wearing the 8 chunky bangles would stop waving her arms about and clanking like the ghost of Jacob Marley. It was definitely an age-ist response - and that's entirely natural - I think their combined age was probably less than mine.