These Purple Years

A long while ago I heard of an old Japanese tradition which associates the colour purple with the seventies and endorses it as appropriate for wearing by people in that venerable age group. Then when I turned seventy I joined the Red Hat Society founded in the USA in 1997 as ‘the place where there is fun over fifty’. This society takes for its motto so to speak a poem called ‘Warning’ by the UK poet Jenny Joseph (1932–). The first verse of ‘Warning’ begins thus:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

… And make up for the sobriety of my youth!

A nice synchronicity between East and West isn’t it? Loving the colour purple I quite often wear it not just to Red Hat Society functions. I was born in 1941 and most of the tanka in this book have been written and published during my ’purple years’.