Anne Schlebusch > Quotes

“Maggie was surprised to find her heart flipping. At 70 you think that’s all over. You’re too creaky, too selfish, too afraid of infirmity, too focused on staving off dependency, too focused on your unreliable knees and your wobbles on the stairs. Too farty.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“They looked at each other and enjoyed a chain of grins. They liked the idea of being Bloomers. It was a totally apt and enticing term. Fun, lively, taking them forward. Their own word. Lekker!”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Maggie knew she was a Boomer. Born 1950. A life bookended by World War 2 and Covid-19. Seventy years and now this damnable scythe of death.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Old folks’ kind of night. Hello, the wee hours. And that refers to the loo, too. The wee hours and the wonky bladders. Like a newborn.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Stories aren’t bookended by Januaries and Decembers. We aren’t movie directors who can shriek, “Stop it right there! This is my feel-good moment. The pinnacle.” There might be a defined start but there isn’t an end.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Wasn’t it indeed a time to plant a new society for the oldies? Take them out of their glass cabinets. They’re not only feel-good ornaments. Sad old hug machines. They aren’t the moth-balled walking-dead. Take them out of their pre-coffins. Cultivate everything that would add value to their lives. Believe in agency.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“I said it’s time for people to unmute their strong feelings or horror or anger fundamental causes. Evils like those to do with racism, not one race, that’s a label, don’t like it but it’s a label. Racism is evil. And treating women like ‘things’ to be relied upon, or often just used and discarded, or cruelly raped and murdered. Unmute. That’s what we must do!”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Maggie got straight to the point. What about calling themselves Bloomers? It was the poppies on her leggings that had grabbed her heart. Blooming is aspirational. If we’re going with branding, let’s get blooming!”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Old age homes are, sadly, a pre-coffin portal, with stays of varied duration – often wheel-chaired in and usually gurneyed out to a discreetly parked black van. Long-term residents could quickly categorise the newbies in terms of the three M’s – mobility, marbles, and months left.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Mags continued: “I know it might look disrespectful for people to be standing among the gravestones but, to be honest, we old folk look at gravestones as our welcome mat to the next world and let’s not pretend we are heading anywhere else. Applies to all of us, of course, but we’re just a lot closer to it than you are.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“I’m actually an old woman, no more arsing around with faking youth. The world could see my wrinkles and dodder a while back. I’m only a spring chicken inside my deluded brain. On the outside, I’m a chicken-neck. Not a chick anymore. Just an old bird.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“When had they started to talk about booking into a retirement place? Was it in their early sixties? Starting to worry about places being full? Peer pressure? Turning the dimmer switch on their lives.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“You could practise being grumpy from age 60 up but the Golden Age for grumping is 70 up.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“At the end, when Christiane invited her to address old people directly, she had looked the camera in the eye and said, “Don’t be so scared of protecting your future that you can’t live in the present. You only have one life and only one body; don’t check yourself out of joy.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer

“Maggie perked up on hearing the word “aged”. “There. That’s a reasonable word ‘Geriatric’ drives me crazy, and ‘elderly’ is so loosely and rudely, it seems to be. ‘Aged’ is just a technical term. Anyway – ‘Boomer’ Is the cutest.”
― Anne Schlebusch, Bloomer