Britta's Letters from her life divided between city-life in German's capital Berlin and life in a Bavarian village

Thursday 20 June 2013

"Pretty Cool for a Pensioner"??


Britta Hill

First I want to say: I really adore Joanna Lumley!
I LOVED her as Patsy in "Absolutely Fabulous" - so hilarious, so blunt - so wonderful!
Then I loved her campaign for the Gurkhas.
And I think she is a very pretty role models for the "Young at Heart".
But I didn't like her last advert for "In the home with Sky Go":  www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLCGphxg6ds
There she is shown as a lovely to look at person - but behaving like a woman of the Fifties.
I don't believe that she (!) all these years had endured to watch (for her: boring) motor races with her husband without going to buy her own television set... And a bigger one as that little laptop she uses in the kitchen!!! I firmly believe that Joanna has what Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own." (And she was not speaking of the kitchen).
But what really annoys me is that seemingly everbody does believe that people, as soon as they become pensioners - and in lovely England they can become that with 60 years, I have heard - get weak in the brain, lose their marbles, suddenly don't know how to use a mobile or computer.
Hey - we are speaking of people who became pensioners - so they must have been working somewhere - and where do you not need a computer nowadays? So: people who where managers, actors, mothers, whatsoever - suddenly are depicted as Rip van Winkle? König Rotbart? Having overslept the technical inventions of the last decades???
"Pretty silly", I say.
You are a great person, Joanna, you are a role model - don't play "Little silly me, not wanting to annoy big mighty husband". You are worth far more than that.
And: Old is not a synonym for stupid.

8 comments:

  1. What's wrong with that? Anyway, she's only making money the best way pensioners can, although I do have some doubts with selling myself to the Murdochs.

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  2. If I were the Murdochs, I would take you, Tom!

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  3. Oh my, Britta.... Is this my fate come next Friday? I will be a full time retiree or pensioner ... That word does have a nice ring to it! I fully agree with Virginia... I have a room of my own. Husband claims the bigger screen tv in the living room. I get comfy on my favorite well worm sofa. Sirius radio brings me my favorite tunes from the 60s, iPad allows me friends all over the world, and I even have my own tv remote! I even manage to read a real book or two. Will let you know in early July if my brain suddenly becomes mush and I struggle with the smallest techno task... Well maybe not.. I might not remember how! ;-) smiles across the miles... Have a lovely weekend! Susan

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    1. Dear Susan,
      I think you are lucky and just an example of what I mean: pensioners are often surprisingly young nowadays - though I don't think "young" is something so special that it should reign the world. It is cute, and it is lovely to be young - but I don't like that media try to hype it by taking the worth of the other.
      Susan, you will keep on as you are doing now. That part in the ad with Joanna I liked: "Pretty cool" - no need to take it back or downgrade it by making the pensioner "less worth" by the words: "for a .." That's like saying: "pretty brilliant - for a child" - it's condenscending.
      Have a beautiful weekend too! Britta

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  4. Cut her a bit of slack
    She's hoarding for the grand kids

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    1. I can understand that she does ist - but not the advertisers: they could have made a better thing out of it - with her potential!

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  5. Funny, the kitchen is my 'room.' I'm typing in it now ...

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    1. Nothing against a lkitchen, Suze - I just don't believe Joanna that she is a meak follower of her husband. Maybe I've seen her too often as Patsy.

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