Dear LPG,

I often wonder how many of us older people remember our youth.  I enjoyed playing outside, much more than the young ones of today do, and I think that we were a much more sociable nation in the 1950s. People worked just as hard but they also made a lot more time to visit each other in my version of childhood.  Sundays were special because, with few shops open, there was nothing better to do than go to church and spent the afternoon either visiting or entertaining numerous relatives who all lived a lot closer in those days. 

During those visits we children often spent a lot of the time being ‘seen but not heard’ while we tried to be on our best behaviour, and there were many rewards such as those piggy-bank bound coins that we would be offered on the departure of such visitors.  But one of my most feared scenarios was that of a particular great aunt, who at the end of each of her very regular visits to my house, would say her goodbyes to my parents with a smile and then turn to the children before puckering up for her goodbye kiss from each of us.

Back in those days, even though I loved her in my own way, I would shudder at the thought of her getting close enough to do that to me, but trying to get out of it would have been thought rude and unacceptable by my parents. It was those wrinkled lips and the discoloured teeth that were the problem I think.

But the years have flown by and now that I have attained grandaunt and grandmother status, I have to say that, for me, one of the most treasured gifts is being able to get close to the little ones and having been denied that closeness over the lockdown months it has been even harder. 

But lockdown has given me a lot more time to take a long hard look in the mirror and I have come to the conclusion that I am fast turning into a lady who has no choice but to offer that pucker-lipped old lady look, especially first thing in the morning before I put my teeth in for the day, at which point I look and feel more normal again. 

I think that the oldies of today need to thank the dental innovators for one very important gift and that is the shape of their jaw line as they get older.  More than that, and in the light of our need to maintain our failing youthfulness and accepted ‘presentability’, even when invitations start to become offered less often, most ladies will produce a little powder and lipstick in an attempt to improve their look.

In the absence of being able to visit my grandchildren, I have spent many of the closing minutes of a mobile phone video call giving the screen of the mobile phone a kiss, and while I hope that my grandchildren find my offer of a kiss more acceptable, it occurred to me that the vision of the advancing wrinkled details of my virtual kiss must be quite worrying to them as my face advances toward the camera lens and becomes so big that it envelopes the whole of their screen. 

I think I am lucky that my kisses don’t appear to provoke that same fear that I had of a kiss from a particular old lady, because of my relatively acceptable 21^st century, less wrinkled jawline and lip line, but I have come to the decision that I should stop literally kissing the camera lens on my phone for fear of frightening them.

Perhaps this is all just a way of saying that I am glad that self-isolation is coming to an end!

LG, Brockley