Archive for the 'Getting old' Category

Who is Justin Bieber?

March 9th, 2011

There was an item on the news last night about Justin Bieber.

Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?

Apparently he is well known enough to bring the centre of Dublin to a halt, with crowds of screaming kids running amok, trying to find him.

Now I have never heard the name before, and for someone to blind-side me like that is pretty unusual.  I decided to further my education by finding out precisely who this little sod is.

The first thing I found out about him is that apparently he is in the top ten of The Most Popular Women on the Web.  I thought that must be a misprint, but apparently not.  Very fucking strange.

The second thing I noticed is that he is the image of Donny Osmond, which is enough to send shivers up my spine. This is like something out of The X Files. Are the Mormons into cloning?

Bieber or Osmond?

Moving on, I decided to find out a little more about this freak.

Search terms that have been used on the Interweb -

“Justin Bieber takes estrogen pills”

“Justin Bieber molests fan”

“Justin Bieber removes left testicle” [what the fuck?]

“Justin Bieber hermaphrodite”

“Justin Bieber syphilis”

“Justin Bieber impregnated his mother”

and probably the worst of all -

“Justin Bieber converts to Scientology”

Either this is one weird fucking kid or else he would seriously need to gloss up his public image a bit.

And to think that in my day, pop stars were frowned upon by the elderly because they had long hair.

What the fuck is the world coming to?

The phases of ages

February 20th, 2011

It’s funny how age changes as you get older.

As soon as a child becomes aware of age, he or she will loudly proclaim it to the world, and will even declare the quarters, as they are very important.  “I am four and a quarter” they will loudly proclaim and woe betide any parent who leaves out the all important quarter.

As they approach double digits, the quarters will be dropped as they are then perceived as childish.  The most important thing at this stage is to achieve the double digits, because then you are BIG.

Through the teens, a child will tell their age very grudgingly.  It’s not that they are ashamed of their age; it’s just that any information is parted with very grudgingly.  The goal at this stage is to reach that age where they can legally drive a car, or vote, or legally get hammered down the pub.

From the twenties on, age isn’t as important as it used to be.  Birthdays are celebrated as a routine rather than something significant.  Of course this is the period of The Big Four Oh, or The Big Five Oh which, like the turning of the New Year is just a matter of digits and has sweet all fucking significance, but it seems to make some people happy.

At my age, birthdays is an event which tends to catch us by surprise.   It creeps up on us, and the next thing is that we are wondering where the fuck the year went since the previous one.  People ask us how old we are, and instead of the figure tripping lightly off our tongues, we have to carefully calculate by subtracting our year of birth from the current year.  As we have usually forgotten what year it is, and the old maths aren’t as sharp as they used to be, this can take some time.  It’s easier to just forget we have a birthday in the first place.

Of course, I am now heading towards the next phase.  That is the phase where a birthday is more of a triumph than a celebration.  It’s another year where The Reaper has been cheated and a further year to piss off society by cluttering up the place.  I’m not looking forward to that phase, but I’m not dreading it either.  I’ll will take things as they come.

But the first person who mentions ‘young’ when giving my age had better be prepared to have their head caved in with a baseball bat.

‘Eighty years young?’

Fucking nauseating.

A forgotten title

February 9th, 2011

I have said before how I like the age I am.

Getting old has so many good points that I would be hard pressed to mention them all.  Probably the best one is the ability to get away with just about anything.  No matter what I say or do, people just look at each other and make some pitying remark about the sad old codger.  The fact that I say and do those things deliberately is just part of the fun.

There is one aspect of aging that is genuinely pissing me off though.

The fucking memory has gone to the dogs altogether.  I have heard of this phenomenon before and I didn’t really believe it, but it really is true that I couldn’t tell you what I had for breakfast but can remember the smallest details about things that happened years ago.

Most of the time, I get by by writing little notes to myself.  There are little scraps of paper all over the house usually with telephone numbers on them and I can’t remember who the numbers belong to.  Other scraps of paper have shopping lists on them where I have gone down to the village and bought everything on the list, only to go back down again later for something I had forgotten to write on the list, and hadn’t remembered when I was down there.

Another one that is always catching me out is the central heating.  We have a strange looking yoke in the kitchen that looks like a wood burner, but in fact runs on kerosene.   It is a great yoke and heats the whole house.  The problem with it is that to fire it up, I have to open the oil tap and wait for a couple of minutes before chucking a match in.  But I always forget and half an hour later, Herself will come in from the garden and ask why the heating isn’t on.  By that time of course the fucking yoke has flooded and is very difficult to light.  Take it from me, but a lake of kerosene is a lot harder to light than a small puddle.  And it stinks the house out after.

Of course I get a load of exercise around the house, as I am forever going into a room and then forgetting why.  That means I have to retrace my steps to see if I can remember why I wanted to go into that room in the first place.

The other great source of healthy exercise is my pipe.  I am forever putting it down somewhere and then forgetting where.  This means an extensive trek around the garden, the sheds, the garage and every room in the fucking house.

Who says smoking is bad for your health?

Forty years a growing

February 4th, 2011

Back in 1971 I had a rather nasty dose of glandular fever.

When I say nasty, I mean nasty.  I was bedridden and incapacitated for three weeks or so.  As a result of the incapacity, I didn’t shave, so by the time I was back on my feet, I had a reasonably respectable beard.  Just for the hell of it, I decided to leave it, and there it has remained ever since.

Actually, that’s not true.  When our K8 was a nipper, I shaved it off and just left a moustache, but the result frightened the child so I had to grow it back again.

I like my beard for two reasons. 

The first, as I discovered during my clean-shaven experiment is that it keeps me nice and warm.  The second is that it is nice not to have to worry about shaving every day.  All it takes is a slash with the scissors a few times a year.

Lately, out of pure curiosity I have been tempted to have another blast at being clean shaven, but Herself doesn’t like the idea.  I don’t know why, but she can be a little strange at times.  So it looks like it shall remain.

Like myself, it has grown old and grey in the past forty years since it first sprouted.  It is the greyest part of me now, though the rest of my hair is slowly catching up.  And the hat does match the handbag, if you are interested.

I am really quite attached to it now, as anyone who witnesses the grandchildren trying to swing out of it will testify.  I think I’ll resign myself to being somewhat hairy for the rest of my days.

It’s a fucking bitch when jam or marmalade gets stuck in it though…..

Halloween is a speed bump

October 30th, 2010

I think I can safely say that I do not like this time of year.

Halloween is like a speed bump at the end of a motorway.  You are flying along at a respectable speed when suddenly you hit this bump at the end of October, and you know you are in for a very rough ride for the next couple of months.

Halloween used to be OK.  Kids would sling an old sheet over their heads and go around the neighbourhood blagging apples or a few sweets.  Then the fucking American thing took over and it became Trick or Treat.  That expression really annoys me.

Then the clocks go back.  That is another pain in the hole that I swear was introduced just to piss me off.  I hate dark evenings, so they introduce this gimmick to make the evenings even darker.  Fuck that.  My clocks are staying the way I set them.

Post Halloween we enter the feeding frenzy that is Christmas.  Already the advertisements are appearing.  The same tacky shoddy overpriced crap is going to be rammed down our neck for the next two months.  The same ghastly ‘songs’ are going to be crooned at us wherever we go.  How I would love to consign Bing Crosby and Slade forever to Room 101.

It has been a pretty good Summer, as Summers go, and even now it is mild outside; mild enough that I needn’t wear a jumper.  But from now on is when the weather takes a sharp downturn.  The last of the leaves get blown off the trees and we are left with bare branches glistening in the Winter rain.

November and December are the country lane of the year, all right.  Full of potholes, mud and rocks.

‘Tis time to abandon the car and take to the pub.

Somehow November and December seem almost bearable when viewed through the bottom of a glass.

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