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It’s one or the other

It’s no secret that contributors this particular media organ tend to reflect, describe or report upon events and occurrences – if not modern life itself – from the perspective of people who are rather older than “that the average bear” (as Yogi Bear might have said, not that many under the age of forty will ‘get’ the cultural reference).

My editors would probably wish me to expand upon this statement immediately by stressing that, while there’s a small gap between identifying our target demographic as the Saga Generation [featuring ads for senior citizens’ household and medical insurance, retirement villages, funeral expenses and Stannah Stairlifts] and those of all ages [commenting upon the 21st Century as it is lived by humans from an oldie’s viewpoint], it’s the one in which we’re trying to operate. And it seems to be working, if our latest official average daily readership figure of 384,587 is to be believed.

KID (THE)When you take the performing arts (e.g. theatre, ballet, opera, magic, even stand-up comedy) and sport, if you think about it, those of us born since 1900 are privileged in being the first in history who have been able to look back at the previous generations’ giants of each of these forms of expression demonstrating their skills and artistry as they were seen – deliberately in the case of the performing arts – by onlookers in their own time (through the mediums of film, video and sound).

Inevitably, of course, fashions and styles change and evolve over time, a fact which can have the detrimental effect of making performances from the past seem quaint, trite or unfulfilling to modern tastes.

FredAll that acknowledged, which modern, smartphone-savvy teenager could still not be moved to wonder by the dancing skills of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, great movie acting performances such as Jack Nicholson’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest, or even the soccer skills of Eusebio or George Best, or say the swashbuckling batsmanship of Sir Viv Richards?

If by now you’re beginning to question where I’m going with today’s post, I’d better get straight to my two (seemingly unconnected) themes.

My text for today comes from a report by Colin Fernandez, Science Correspondent, upon new research undertaken by the University of Waterloo in Canada whose conclusion seems to be that older people who are ‘younger at heart’ have better sex lives than those who aren’t.

old coupleThis item of vital information appears today on the website of the Daily Mail – see here – YOUNGER AT HEART

My supplementary point is perhaps an obvious one – that, whatever age we are, there is a whole lot of human joy, reward and indeed community spirit across the generations to be had from having a sense of humour.

Let me explain.

Not long after I left school in 1970 a chap I came across in a far off distant land explained the stages of life in a manner that appealed to me at the time and which in many respects I think still holds true.

It’s a version of the famous quotation from the Bible’s First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13 verse 11):

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’

pensMy Australian mystic used sheep pens as an analogy. Life, he said, was like a series of them into which generations of sheep (human beings) were introduced. We begin in a young child’s pen and stay there until we are ready to progress by jumping into the next one (say ‘an older children’s one’). And thus the process continues, through an ‘adolescents’ pen, to those intended for ‘young adults’, for those in their ‘late twenties’, ‘early married life’, ‘maturity’, ‘middle age’ …. and so on … (you get my drift).

Sometimes, he explained, whether from character, lack of confidence, lack of application or perhaps even intelligence, some of the sheep (sorry, humans) take longer than others to make the leap from one pen to another, say for sake of this example from the ‘young childrens’ pen to the ‘older childrens’ one. Or from the ‘adolescents’ one to the ‘young adults’. And so on.

That’s why sometimes you get people who act with immaturity – or so it seems to those of the same age who have already jumped into the pen they should (by a certain age) be in. Or even the one after that.

I had a close pal once (now deceased) who never made the slightest concession to age. In his middle to late thirties he still burned the candle at both ends. Though he wore a pin-stripe suit and worked in the City, he did everything at full bore and of an evening (still in his pin-stripe) could regularly be seen – if you had attended one – head-banging away in front of the stage at a heavy metal concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon alongside those dressed as Goths and Hells Angels. Maybe that partly explains why he never made it to forty.

But my point is this. Was Andrew an immature twerp who never grew up, or was he simply a man of keen lifeforce and vitality who made no concessions for age and just kept ‘going for it’ … unlike the rest of us who gradually got old, fat, sedate and boring, as perhaps we were predestined to do and as society demanded?

I also remember to this day once going with a cousin to see my grandmother for lunch in the Dolphin Square block of flats in Pimlico where she lived not long after her eightieth birthday. She was always interested in what young people were doing and asked my cousin what form of birth control she was using, adding at another point in the conversation “I may look like an eighty year old woman, but inside I’m still an eighteen year old”.

puzzledMore frequently than I used to, these days I tend to contemplate my aches and pains, my increasing physical limitations, proneness to tiredness, clumsiness and forgetfulness and make allowances for them, or alternatively take steps to ‘work around’ them, possibly as a means to self-preservation and comfort.

Most days, unconsciously, I still feel eighteen inside some of the time, but then I get confronted by some seventy-something-looking geezer in the shaving mirror and naturally assume there’s been some mistake, or that I’m having an unpleasant dream from which (hopefully) I shall soon wake up.

But then you have to laugh.

It’s an old gag, but I think I first heard it from – or attributed to – Sir Clement Freud:

“These days, whenever a beautiful young lady suggests to me that we should go upstairs and make love, I have to explain to her that these days, unfortunately, it’s a case of either one or the other …”

On one occasion about ten years ago I was listing my then current aches and pains to my daughter. Trying to comfort me she said “Don’t worry, Dad – you know what they say – you’re only as old as you feel”. I tried to correct her with “I think that’s ‘You’re only as old as the woman you feel’ …” and she exclaimed “Don’t be disgusting!” and threw a cushion at me.

Referring back to the article I mentioned earlier, I suppose I shall now have to go back and read it again before deciding whether I’m still feeling ‘young at heart’ … or just heading for an early grave.