Spot the difference ...

I couldn't resist being first in line to see Meryl Streep as Maggie and, true to form, she was magnificent. (Only saw her a few days ago in Mamma Mia on television ... what a difference!) But, somewhat to my surprise, I did feel slightly uncomfortable watching this portrayal of Lady Thatcher in lonely, doddery old age, still chatting to her husband who has been dead for several years. 'An imagined version of how she might be. Probably not accurate,' Meryl Streep agreed in an interview on Woman's Hour. It's not presented with any lack of compassion ... if anything, it humanises the Lady ... but she is still alive, and I shouldn't think there's more than a dozen or so people in the world who have any true idea of what she is really like today. Anyway, who says it's a sign of dementia to carry on a running conversation with one's dear departed ... that's something we all do in our heads, surely? Maybe it's because today is my birthday but the film did make me think about passing time. Mrs Thatcher became PM in the year that I graduated, when it seemed so completely astonishing that a woman could run the country and so the events of the film were the backdrop to the start of my adult life. I went on strike during the winter of our discontent of 1979, thrilled to bits to have six weeks off work (the novelty had worn off fast) and not giving a hoot about whether my overflowing dustbins would ever get emptied ... By the summer of 1982, by then in a proper job, I was memorably on board a destroyer as it sailed into Portsmouth harbour on its return from the Falklands. It really doesn't seem that long ago. In fact, I emerged from the movie wondering how on earth Mrs Thatcher and I both got to be so bloody old ...