Whistles from builders, insults from makeup artists, happy children: what makes you feel young again?

by Victoria Smurfit

If you are not aging, then you either have a deft physician or else you’re rotting in the ground. Me? I am turning 144 years old this month. (If I lived on Mercury, that is.) That’s a lot of years. I feel depressed to have spent so long on earth and to have learned so little, yet exhilarated that I know so much more than I think. (By planet Mars calculations, I am only 18-and-a-half. I think I’ll move there instead.)

An American makeup artist once quizzed me about the “blemishes” on my face. I was gutted.

“But I am marinaded in Biactol! Where are the spo... uh... zits?”

“It is like, gawd, brown leprosy,” he hollers. “Bring me the pancake. We have age marks here.” A lackey scurries off.

My mother had spent years convincing me that I had thousands of beauty spots – her wisdom was being challenged.

“Sir, those are freckles.”

With a flick of the wrist he whispered, “Honey, play ball or I am putting a bell around your neck.”
Potato. Potaahtoe.

His age-spots accusations, ironically, made me feel like a teenager again – young, embarrassed, manipulated – so I went with it. But what else can make you feel young? The number is a pointless guide, we all fudge it. I asked a colleague recently what she considers ‘middle-age.’ She replied that on Monday she would have said 40. On Tuesday however, after she crossed another decade mark, she changed her mind to 45. When asked how she was planning on making it the full 90 years, she tossed around expletives like ‘Botox.’

Collaring another male pal, I enquired what made him feel old. Without hesitation came his answer: having a greater political awareness, paying more than €10 for a bottle of wine and indulging a desire to leave weddings before midnight.

I turned to his wife and asked the same. Survey said: not being whistled at when passing a building site.
What makes me feel old is being awake for 20 hours a day. Keeping up with home and work is a juggling game, and the only ball I can let drop is sleep. Luckily for me, it is finite, only a few days or weeks or months at a time. So I power through, head up. I am Woman, Hear Me Snore. Please.

The marriage of kids and travel is an age-old story of chaos. Every parent has a horror scenario, cautionary tales. I learned the basics very early on:

1. Always bypass the coffee shop. You cannot hold a coffee, wheel a pram, carry a bag and call your agent to say that the flight’s late all at the same time.

2. Don’t buy a magazine and expect to read it. It will end up as papier maché with baby drool.

3. Never plan to get off the plane clean.

Not so long ago, I was booked to jet off to sunny Spain on a job. Since I was playing a Costa del Sol resident, I was re-skinned in fake tan. I had a nanny with me, so I didn’t have to handle the arrangements with quite the usual military precision. Damn it, I even bought a newspaper. This was going to be a good flight. 

The plan was to land and head straight to the car park at the airport where the unit base for the film was set up. I would be escorted through the immigration line and should be in the makeup chair ten minutes after landing. The nanny was prepped to care for my little one as I went in to my first scene. In the queue to board I ran through my lines in my head. All was calm.

By the time we reached 30,000 feet, on the outside of the rugby-ball windows the sky was clear and blue. Inside, things were far uglier. My little girl had contracted a chest infection somewhere over the Atlantic. Screaming and sneezing walrus tusks from her nose, her presence was felt all the way down the aisle.

Kicking the stupid newspaper out from under my feet, I walked her for miles. From cockpit to lavatory she roared. Heart bursting for her, I did my very best – holding her tight and upright,  catching as much of the exiting goo as possible. The warmth of the plane and the stress encouraged my Tango tan to rub off and collect in patches on my white shirt. I was green and orange.

As we descended, she slept. The worst was over. A sigh of relief rolled through the cabin as we landed and the passengers were freed from my drama. A doctor met us on landing. I was hurled into a scene with my bemused co-star – it was a lot to ask of him to work with this smudged girl he had never met before. But looking over the back of the camera, I could see my baby patient smiling and content, so I turned towards the scene. I felt young and – for a moment, anyway – invincible once more.