On Wednesday I read a profile in the Marina, in the chair I keep meaning to recover, about a woman who had, at forty-eight, opened a small concept store in Margate. She had previously been in PR. She was, the piece said, in her power. She was photographed against a wall.
The wall was a colour I have seen before, in the same magazine, around a different woman, last month. Last month's woman was also forty-eight. She had moved to Devon. The wall, I believe, was paler in Devon. The angle of the woman was approximately the same.
Forty-eight is, I have started to notice, having a moment. The previous moment — around forty — was about being shocked that one had got there. The current moment is about being seen to be operating from there. The forty is a private number. The forty-eight is a posable one.
My mother has been clipping these and leaving them in a stack on the table where I keep my keys. She is doing this, I think, kindly. Margaret will be seventy-four next year and finds the whole genre — and I am quoting her — "a bit much, but I keep them anyway."
The stack contains, at last count: three Observer profiles, two outdoor kitchens, one memoir with a peach on the cover, one business in Margate, one business in the Cotswolds, and a Telegraph piece with the word thriving in the headline that Margaret had circled and put a small question mark next to. The peach is, you understand, an editorial decision.
I have started, on the bus, to look at the walls. The walls are doing more work than the women. The wall is what makes the woman photographable; the wall is where the genre lives. Chipped paint, mid-tone, a faint suggestion of planning permission concerns. I have begun to assess walls.
Gerald, leaning on the fence on Sunday, asked me when I was going to start my business. I said I had a business. He said he meant a proper one. I went inside.
[The Marina has run three pieces this month on women who have just done a thing. Two outdoor kitchens. One business. None of them, I note, are mine.]
Without a wall, you are just a woman who is forty-eight at home.
The piece on Wednesday was, I should say, fine. The store sounded nice. I would shop there. The owner came across as composed — as someone whose tax return is presumably up to date. I would not, on balance, like to be photographed against its wall.
The thing about the wall is that one is required, increasingly, to have located one's wall. To know where it is. To know what it says about you. The wall is the editorial position; the woman is the topic; the magazine is the verdict. I have not located my wall. The walls in my flat are magnolia and were magnolia when I moved in, which was 2014.
I will be forty-eight in March. The morning of the birthday will be a Tuesday, which feels — and this is a private observation — like an oversight. I expect, accordingly, for things to begin happening. I expect the wall to be located. I do not expect to report on any of it.
Margaret has, I notice, started a fresh stack.
— Charlie is not, at this writing, having anything begin to happen. She would like that noted in perpetuity.
— Charlie