Glittery_Bug
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But has she found freedom at a price? She currently lives alone. There's Dora the bulldog, but it seems Birkin longs for more. She draws my attention to the first song on her album, Prends Cette Main, about a middle-aged woman longing for one last lover: 'I think a lot of other people from probably about 40, 50, certainly from 50, have been in exactly that situation, and it would be nice to know what it's like to have a heavy body on you, it would be nice to try to get out from that sort of position when someone's gone to sleep on top of you and you have to try delicately to remove your arm. I can't remember that in, what, 10 years, 12 years?' There's also the realisation that time has passed her by more quickly than she'd thought. She points to the lyrics of another song, Madame, about her horror at realising she was no longer a young mademoiselle: 'When someone says, "Madame', and you realise that you're no longer, what, a little boy or what did you think you were – some kind of elf? Anyway, you suddenly wake up to the fact that your outside doesn't correspond at all with the inside anymore.'
And, indeed, despite the desirable location of Birkin's flat and its air of dishevelled opulence, she has to work to pay the bills like all the rest of us. But maybe, she says, that's the best way to be.
'Yes. I have to work. I have to pay back a lot of things. I have to work for a time of my life when I got screwed the way some people do. But then, actually, I also realised I was working because it would be very lonely not to. And also, you can't ring up the children all the time and say, "Hello, what are you doing tonight?" It's quite nice and rather surprising to be asked to be doing things at my age in so many different things. So, yes, I'll do this concert, and then someone wanted a rather vulgar comedy film, and I thought, "Oh, good, a vulgar comedy film is exactly what is needed." And so that will be fun, yes.' And, yes, Birkin, ever the stoic, will keep pushing on.
And, indeed, despite the desirable location of Birkin's flat and its air of dishevelled opulence, she has to work to pay the bills like all the rest of us. But maybe, she says, that's the best way to be.
'Yes. I have to work. I have to pay back a lot of things. I have to work for a time of my life when I got screwed the way some people do. But then, actually, I also realised I was working because it would be very lonely not to. And also, you can't ring up the children all the time and say, "Hello, what are you doing tonight?" It's quite nice and rather surprising to be asked to be doing things at my age in so many different things. So, yes, I'll do this concert, and then someone wanted a rather vulgar comedy film, and I thought, "Oh, good, a vulgar comedy film is exactly what is needed." And so that will be fun, yes.' And, yes, Birkin, ever the stoic, will keep pushing on.
- Jane Birkin performs at the Barbican Centre, London EC2, Saturday 21 February (020 7638 8891)
. She is my standard of beauty.
