When I am an Old Woman…

Source of photo: Amazon

Do you remember When I’m an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple? The poem, entitled Warning, was written in 1961 when the author, Jenny Joseph, was just 29 years old. Here is a link, with Jenny herself sassily reading the poem aloud just a few short years before her death.

I think I was a young woman aged about age 29 myself, when I first read that poem. I smiled affectionately at the thought of that cheeky old lady finally letting her hair down; finally acting any way she darned well pleased, free from social conformity at last: wearing purple if she wanted to, drinking brandy if she wanted to, learning to spit, sitting on the pavement if she got tired, and ‘hoarding pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes”.

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