The Oldest Person In The World

Montpellier, France. If age is a state of mind, the state of mine that morning was exultant. I’d recently turned 70 and been asked out by a man who guessed we were about the same age. He was fifty-five.

The glow lingered as I ran to catch the tram to the Place de la Comedie, Montpelier’s popular central square.

Tousled blonde hair, a scarf wound around my throat, suede boots with the stacked heels that have a tendency to cause my ankle to twist, but look good with the jeans, I had no doubt I could fly under the age radar.

I was treating myself to a three day intensive course at a Montpellier language school. Although I’d lived in France for almost two years, my French hadn’t advanced as much as I’d hoped. At best, I sounded like a precocius toddler. “I want, I like, I don’t like.”

Learning a foreign language, I’d read, was good for the ageing brain — although I didn’t want to think of of mine that way.

The crowd waiting outside the school was young. Back packs and braces and smatterings of pimples. Younger than my granddaughter. The first clue perhaps that I should have researched the school first. Kids pick up languages much faster than adults and I didn’t want be fumbling for my glasses while they were conjugating avoir and etre. I spotted an older couple which made me feel better until…