Gransnet?

Proud to be (mostly) silver, but refuse to be pigeonholed as a silver surfer. I like the title 'Gransnet' and am sure I would never have joined if it had been calle 'silver surfers'.

Yep, agreement all round, except about how we say the same thing. Isn't that what gransnet is partly about?

It's just that I don't feel younger than I am. I feel a great deal more mature, mentally, than I did when I was younger. I suppose my personality has stayed pretty much the same as ever (contrasuggestible, argumentative , among other things), but that's not, to me, feeling the same as I did when I was younger.

Maybe what it boils down to with me, is that I've always been content to be the age I am. I never could get into the teenage angst of trying to look older than I was. In fact I usually looked younger – bus drivers only believed I was old enough to pay full fare when I had a baby in tow in my mid-twenties. Now, I'm happy to be 57; I'm happy to look 57; I'm happy for people to think I'm getting older; I'm happy for people to notice my hair is greying and my sking is aging. Bottom line, I suppose, is that I don't care what other people think I am.

So I have no need to feel younger or older or anything other than what I actually am, both in my mind and out of it.

jingle I think 71

Meant 72! Blimey I'm as bad! I think I'm 68

Look at your birth certificate. I reckon it's 71 if you're having that kind of memory loss Rose

Elegran you didn't used to be that much older than me! You sure you're not cheating?!

......... J07 wanders away wondering if she's 71 or 72................

Yes .*absen*, I used to find those in the grate in the first house we rented, it was damp and dark, silver fish I think?

I really dislike the term "silver surfer" and it certainly does not conjure up a feeling of fun for me. Quite the opposite actually.

I think sometimes Bags I do find it difficult to accept that I am 51. I remember my mum was "old" and stuffy at 31 and I didn't want that to happen to me. I look in the mirror and I see a 51 year old (sometimes 91 year old) looking back at me but inside I feel so much younger.

Not putting my point very well, but I hope you know what I am trying to say.

Silver lurker sounds like some sort of creepy crawly found in a damp basement – I don't think we want to associate with that.

Gransnet is what it says on the tin. Silver Surfer is not howI feel, nor do I feel like 25, th ank goodness. I am blondish and intend to stay that way as long as I can afford the colour. I am more lurker than surfer.

I don't feel like a "freak".

Ella46 Of course your brain/mind is not rigid, uninteresting and old and nor is that of most, if not all Gransnetters. Of course you can describe it in any way you like – I would just find someone who is clearly in their sixties claiming that they still feel 25 inside misleading if they actually meant the same thing that you are saying.

Another violent agreement, I would suggest.

Exactly Lilygran, Ella

I don't ever intend to be a 'silver surfer' however old I get - I aim to be a mouseybrown with blonde and greyish streaks surfer till I die!

Anyway, what does it matter what Gransnet is called - if it suits stay, if it doesn't, don't.

My grandmother at 99 told me she still felt just the same inside as she had when a girl. I thought what she meant was that she was still open to new experiences and new ideas (which she was) even though she was no longer physically strong. She wasn't happy about the physical limitations imposed by ageing.

I think we're saying the same thing in different ways Bags, which is fine.
My brain is still absorbing stuff, not rigid and uninterested and old.

I can describe it in any way I wish to.

I am a grandmother, I am 73, but my hair has not yet gone silver so I don't feel that I am a silver surfer.

Gofrit, absent! Oh how I've missed your gransnet input!

I also get sick of women in their fifties and upwards insisting they still feel a couple of decades or more younger in their heads. Does that mean they haven't carried on being educated/educating themselves as they've grown older? Does it mean they think exactly the same way about everything as they did when they were young women? If so, I'm unimpressed.

I have moved on physically and mentally since I was a naive young woman, and bloody glad I am too for the mental development. That's what it is, you "oh-I'm-still-young-in-my-head" freaks – development. If you haven't carried on developing, you've stagnated. As absent says.

Which DOES NOT mean that you can't still enjoy things in the same way as you did when you were young which, in my less crabby moments, is what I suppose you really mean. If so, say so, instead of clinging on to youth for its own sake.

Please.

Bloody Yoof Culture.

I, too, hate the term 'silver surfers'. For a start, I'm not even going grey, never mind silver!

I am very comfortable with my head being 30ish and my body being 66ish too.

absent I wouldn't dream of calling anyone on here crabby!

sky Gransnet is an entirely all-encompassing name for a board aimed at grandparents.

A number of members don't have grandchildren, or children, but presumably they are comfortable here. In fact, come to think about it, there's not much talk of grandchildren anyway!

As for 'silver surfers' I really dislike that term, along with the likes of 'cougars' and my pet hate 'young at heart'.

Sorry that made me laugh!

Who are you calling crabby *Ella46? Actually my point was a serious one. I have noticed that a lot of older women who claim still to feel that they are anything from 16 to 30 when, in fact, they are anything from 60 to 80, are the very ones locked into their past and unable to adapt to minor or major changes in society. It is, actually, anything but a younger outlook on life and increasingly out of touch with modernity. Obviously, not all but quite a surprising number. Whereas, those who are comfortable with themselves at their age, whatever it may be, seem far more open-minded and up-to-date.