time is on my side, or is it?

my nan once told me: steve, the first 40 years of your life go really slowly, then the next 40 whizz by!
she is now 84 and says she can't quite believe it, and still feels 16 (which if you think about how 16 year olds behave today could have rather worrying implications). She has also turned into Queen Curtain Twitcher, and knows more about the comings and goings of her neighbours than is healthy.

i've been thinking a lot about time and age lately.

growing up, when asked who my ideal man was (no one ever asked about my ideal woman, bizarrely), i would always say Cary Grant. he was handsome and manly. a real gentleman and, at his peak, the ideal age for ideal man material.
it recently struck me that i am now roughly the age he was when he made Arsenic and Old Lace and perfectly embodied the older, wiser partner of my dreams.

and then on Sunday, to ease my aching heart I trundled off the the Wallace Collection. let's just say if Barbara Cartland has reincarnated as a house, she can currently be found in Manchester Square W1. the walls are all bright pink and flock, while hugely lavish chandeliers hang from the ceilings and there isn't one bit of furniture that some poor sod didn't go blind or at least lose a finger carving.
there are also two paintings there that i really wanted to see. The Swing, by Fragonard, which features a lovely young things swinging gaily in lavish gardens (beyond camp) and The Laughing Cavallier.
When we were young we used to play a board game called Masterpiece, which featured loads of paintings, some of which were genuine, some of which were fake. the point of the game was to get rid of the fakes while stockpiling the real thing.
one of the paintings we used to call 'The Old Man'. none of us ever wanted him.* that painting was actually The Laughing Cavalier.
I had a mental image of him being in his 50s. On Sunday I realised it was more like 25.
you know you are getting old when the masterpieces start looking young!

*the Old Man thing has just reminded me of colouring books. no matter where you bought your colouring books, you could guarantee that there would be a picture of a wizened old woman to complete. we always used to call her Granny Grunt.