Thursday, February 28, 2013

191. On getting old - or something like that.

HOME.
The curse of moving.
We have been moving house. Not to another house but within this one, which can be even worse.
It all started when grandson Ellis proudly showed his best mate, Jake, the top floor room where he sleeps when he stays here, which was also his grandmother’s workroom. Best mate Jake was not impressed. A sewing machine (no matter how expensive) and a dolls’ house (of whatever value) are not impressive in a room being presented as a small boy’s bedroom. It was, according to outspoken eight year old Jake, “a bit lame.”
Clearly changes had to be made.
But no change is ever going to be a small one, is it? Well, not in this house it ain’t. In this house change has always had a knock-on effect; move one book and the whole bloody lot tumbles sideways.
Nevertheless, after brief deliberation agreement was reached. Grandson Ellis would have the entire top floor front to himself. My Leader would move her work stuff to the first floor back room (my computer room) and I would relocate to the ground floor dining room: if my computer was still working after the move (it has been known to sulk when shifted) I might still get a blog post out this month. It all sounded very simple. At least, it did when we decided upon it. Such was our enthusiasm we reckoned not with how long it had been since last we undertook a major upheaval. Only now, as my bravely limping Leader repaints that little first floor room and I struggle to lift stuff I would have given no thought to carrying half a mile ten years ago, have we begun to realise…
What getting old means.
I was never going to get - or look - old: it was top of my things-not-to-do-before-I-die list from a very early age and became an integral part of my CV. It was a happy self-delusion that survived (propped up by my Leader’s repeated jocular assertion that she was my ‘picture in the attic’) until but a few years ago when I finally realised I had become invisible to most people younger than myself and voiceless when I spoke to them: It was a signpost pointing to being old and I don’t think I read it too badly. I just inwardly shrugged and outwardly - powerless to communicate - disappeared when in youthful company.
Anyway, in what’s left of my life there’s a great deal more to irk me than the age-old problem of old-age invisibility.
For a start, there has been a marked decline in common courtesy which has come to irritate me the more with each passing year: proof can be found in the plethora of foul-mouthed
graceless morons, devoid of respect for anything or anybody - including themselves - who plague our society in an age when it should have been educated out of them.
Then there has been the failure of public institutions to live up to their once proudly boasted ethical standards: Politicians still abuse power and fiddle their expenses; the business world, sport, and much of the media, appears to be run by foreign gangsters; hospital trusts turn out to be anything but trustworthy; religions become ever more self-deceptively hypocritical; the police seldom grace the streets except in cars or riot gear; education (EBC-GCSE-school-academy) chases around in circles at the whim of whatever political mouthpiece currently calls the tune; and bankers, who have gambled everybody into bankruptcy, still award themselves massive bonuses because they can.
And on a local note: bush telegraph on the Isle of Wight has it that Island prisons now house the majority of the nation’s convicted sex-offenders; rapists, paedophiles and suchlike dregs of humanity. Local consensus has it that as long as they are locked up their presence will have to be accepted, but too many could decide to remain on the Island when they are released and that is not acceptable. The words “have served their time” mean nothing to Islanders who are understandably and emphatically NIMBY on the subject. I’m with them.
Getting old means I express my concern at these matters without much care as to whether or not anybody listens. It also means I spend a lot of time muttering: “Bring back National Service!” (though in my days as a regular soldier I was totally opposed to conscription) and snarling: “Flog ’em!” “Birch ’em!” “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key!” “Shoot ‘em!” “Hang ‘em!” Or…the ultimate deterrent…“Send the bastards back where they came from - even if it is The Isle of Dogs!”
Who said you mellow with age?
Perhaps an ageing cat.

The cat Shadow is estimated to be about eighteen years of age; nobody knows exactly how old and he’s not telling. He can still manage a six foot leap from one roof to another but now gives the manoeuvre a bit more concentration. The only indication he provides that he may be getting on a bit comes in an increased tendency to ignore the fresh water replenished daily in his dish, opting instead for the rainwater retained on the lid of the dustbin in the back garden or - lord help us - whatever liquid remains in the bowl propped on its side in the kitchen sink. There has also been a noticeable increase in his choice of inconvenient places to bed down: currently he is sleeping atop the freshly laundered and ironed curtains that my wife placed close to a radiator to air; I guess it makes a change from whomever’s coat/hat/handbag/homework that happens to have been left in his vicinity.
Don’t ask. He’s a cat.
TELEVISION.
Jools Holland: My Life in Music. (BBC2)
What a pleasant bloke ol’ Jools is. This documentary had him talking of his time with Squeeze, presenting The Tube with the late Paula Yates, his twenty years on Later…With Jools Holland, his unexceptional early life and his quite exceptional adult life as a musical programme presenter, boogie-woogie pianist (among the best in the world) and founder of the two-man Jools Holland Big Band which grew into his twenty-piece Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. This was value viewing.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2013. (BBC2)
Bill Gates talked, fluently and persuasively as one might expect of a multi-billionaire, about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s mission to eradicate polio worldwide. No well-meant undertaking is ever without its detractors and already five vaccination workers have been murdered in Pakistan where, as in Afghanistan and Nigeria, word had been spread that the polio vaccine was being used as a means of sterilizing Muslims. Sheer bunkum, but you can always rely on religious fanatics for trouble.
Not that distrust of Mr. Gates is confined to Muslims. There are others who find the concept of the philanthropic billionaire hard to reconcile with outright success in business. Google: Bill Gates: nice charity work, shame about the business practices I Ellie Mae O‘Hagan to see what I mean.
Four in a Bed. (C4)
My Leader watches this. It is a modified version of Come Dine With Me in which guest house keepers invade each other’s establishments for B&B and the chance to unearth obscure dust and the stray pubic hair.
When last I chanced upon it, a relatively amiable bunch of contestants were being spitefully put to the sword by a pair of bitchy ‘private hoteliers’ who must have set gay rights back twenty five years.
 I could ask who watches it but I have already mentioned one person who does.
Me? I’d not stay with most of the pairs who compete. Not at any price!
Foyle’s War. (ITV1)

Word is that Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks are returning this year in three new two-hour episodes. Hurray!
More when it happens.
READING.
Christopher Brookmyre.
Quite Ugly One Morning (advertised as ‘thrillingly unpleasant’) was apparently voted best first novel of the year (by somebody) in 1996. The author’s take on dire doings in the NHS certainly registered with me, a long ago retired Family Practitioner Committee employee, and I’m not sure how I should feel about that.
Whoever you are and wherever you may be I wish you good health.