Taking a tumble/Ageing hands

So it was with some bemusement I read that Oxford University’s undergraduate admissions officer, Mike Nicholson, has decided that boys generally do better than girls in exam situations because they tend to go with their ‘gut instinct’. In a multiple choice test, for example, boys are more likely to take a risk, and shoot out an answer quickly, whereas girls can be expected to reason the question out, and therefore often take too long to respond. His theory is based on risk aversion: boys are more likely to take risks, while girls actively seek to avoid taking risks.

My recent brush with death (see pages 38 and 39) made me question risk-taking – whether it be playing an active sport with the risk of injury, or the risk of making a fool of yourself by sliding over on roller skates. At one point during my recent roller derby experience I was shown how to fall correctly. My coach told me that this is often the hard part of training, because newbies fear falling – it’s the last thing you want to do. However, I remembered being a child with a huge climbing frame in the garden that I wanted to walk across, about one and a half metres above the ground. I was terrified of falling. One afternoon, in some moment of rare wisdom, I realised that the only way I would ever dare to cross that metal pole, would be to purposely fall off – I let myself stride out, then propelled myself to the grass, unharmed. I subsequently spent the next four weeks of the summer holidays happily crossing that pole, balancing like an inelegant gymnast. Sometimes I fell off, sometimes I didn’t. But I never feared falling again.

Anyway, isn’t it a good thing to pause, and to reason? Or do we ditherers miss a crucial point: risking it all, then falling face-first can sometimes teach you more than staying upright ever can?

My late teens, and early twenties, were prime dithering years. Should I go to university? Or perhaps get a career – but then, what career? There are millions. Well, perhaps I should travel? The questions never stopped – and I’m still waiting for most of the answers. It took me six years longer than my peers to decide that if I didn’t go to university I’d always regret it. It took me a whole portfolio of jobs to finally narrow down exactly what I enjoy – and more to the point, eliminate what I dislike – doing. I imagine that if life were a multiple choice exam I’d be in a continual state of stress, staring at the clock, wondering when the test will end, long after everyone else has gone to the pub to celebrate results.

This has not been the most efficient way to end up here, and because I paused so much, most of my current lifestyle can be attributed to happy circumstance. But I have learnt so much coming the long way round. There probably is a difference between male and female risk tendencies. However, it also has much to do with personalities. We dither because we truly care about the outcome. But we can care too much – and sometimes dithering means we end up with a life much less than perfect – because we never actually do anything, for fear of doing everything wrong.

I like my hands. I enjoy their general usefulness. I like my fingernails painted with varnish, and they can look pretty wearing rings.

I especially enjoy my hands being held. But I am, apparently, going to start disliking them before too long: according to statistics, the number of anti-ageing hand treatments being carried out has increased by 18 per cent. Yes, you read correctly, anti-ageing hand treatments. Apparently women are terrified of having ‘Madonna mitts’: hands are becoming public enemy number one in the perpetual war against time.

And here I was worrying about my face. I’ve already banned it from pulling certain expressions, in the hope that this may delay the tell-tale signs that I can expect to take hold in the next few years. Annoyingly, the lines that seem to be fast approaching are the two laughter lines either side of my smile. I simply can’t stop smiling: I have a ‘bitchy resting face’ that – if left to its own devices – does absolutely nothing for my social life.

So now I know the focus of my ageing trauma should be on my hands – those things that until now I have mindlessly plunged into hot water, recklessly offered to strangers in a variety of friendly gestures, and – horror of horror – neglected to moisturise daily. Will I pay for this ill treatment in 20 years’ time? Well, I’m going to make the decision now not to bloody well care.

Oddly, the parts of my body I like most are my scars. I don’t have many, but I have a few from my tomboy days of climbing trees and falling through glass doors.

I even have one from a misspent bartending youth, when an irate local – a terrier dog named Steve – decided to treat my finger like a piece of pork scratching. My scars signal that I’ve been a few places, that I’ve tried a few things, and been mildly mistreated by a few human and non-human animals. And I think that’s pretty cool.

I’m going to start applying the same logic to my hands – regardless of what the coiffed and fluffed ladies who lunch (near Harley Street) may have to say about it. My hands are going to grow old disgracefully. If they start to look a little ravaged round the edges, I’ll take that as a sign that I’ve lived. If I get the dreaded liver spots, I’ll wonder why they’re called ‘liver spots’ in the first place, then go about my day. If I get veined knuckles, and Madonna mitts, I’ll take that as a sign that I’ve exercised too ferociously – which, let’s face it, will be a miracle. The problem is that when seen against the backdrop of a trim, tight body and unnaturally youthful face, Madonna’s hands do appear out of place. This craze against showing any possible signs of being older than 20-something is just plain rude.

It implies that after your twenties there’s nothing much worth living for, and certainly no reason to think of yourself as attractive. This had better not be true, because I’d rather remain in a perpetual state of ‘bitchy resting face’ than inject my own (otherwise rejected) fat into my liver-spotted, finger joints.