I'm now officially old.
To be fair - I think I was born 60 and it got worse as time went on, but there are several things that have led me to the conclusion that the top of the hill is now behind me.
The first thing that tells you that your dotage is upon you is the way that women (usually Grand mothers and young mothers) refer to you, particularly when they are pointing you out to a young child that is in their care.
It starts well with, "do you see that boy there" and moves on to "that young man" before the inevitable "that Gentleman" and finally, of course, "that old man" (by which they are trying to warn their kid "keep away, he could collapse at any second")
The second thing is, of course, new technology. (Author) Douglas Adams famously once wrote that "anything invented before you were born is in the Natural Order Of Things, anything between then and around 35 years is a New And Exciting Gadget and that anything invented much after your 40th year is Against God And Must Be Stopped.
I was actually having a conversation around the second point at work the other day with a girl half my age who was saying things like "oh I can eat whatever I like and never put on any weight" and "I can't ever see myself not understanding new tech the way my grandmother does" - and yet even she, spring chicken that she comparatively was, admitted that there were elements of social media, such as Twitter, which she didn't really follow (Twitter is beyond me I'm afraid: please explain where the joy is in reading half a stranger's text message). My personal gripe is 3D movies - if the story wasn't good in the first place then some actor waving to the screen and arrows flying out at you isn't going to make it any better (I studiously avoid them and will only go to 2D screenings)
Thirdly, of course, my pop culture references regularly go over the heads of people working in shops. Just recently we went to a hobby shop to buy some glue, pens and other craft materials (we're very fond of gluing pens together in our house...) and whilst Herself was rummaging through her cavernous purse I joked to the assistant that "this is what happened to Lord Lucan and Shergar, you know: they got put in her bag for safe keeping"
Now I'm aware that anyone in the US may not get the reference to the disgraced 60s Lord whose clothes were found abandoned on the beach in the wake of the Police wanting to speak to him in relation to a murder, or to the Grand National winning horse that rumour has it may have been stolen by the IRA with intentions of ransoming it before they realised how hard a thoroughbred is to look after - but both are familiar names in the UK: or at least they should be.
However: even after a brief summary of the Lord Lucan affair (which, incidentally, happened before my time as well) the expression on the girl's face remained polite-yet-liable-to-call-security-at-any-moment.
Fourthly - and I just became aware that this post, although not originally intended to, is slowly turning into a list-o-fives post - I'm hopelessly out of touch with New And Upcoming Musical Artistes. This is something I actually regret - we used to have a 1/2 hour music show here called Top Of The Pops which showed you the top 40 selling singles in the chart and if that were still on today then I would be fully versed because a half-hour music show is about the right length for me and I can't be bothered with all these 1 hour music video shows you get on the digital channels
The most up-and-coming music act that I recently discovered was Gregory Porter: who it has to be said has a great voice and some wonderful tunes - but he's only a small amount younger than me and he sings Jazz - so it hardly qualifies me to announce that I am "down with the kids" (slang for hip - and by god does using the word "hip" make me sound even older)
Fifth - all of a sudden I find young people deeply annoying.
Actually that's not true: all my life I've found them deeply annoying, but it's got worse. Particularly on public transports
There's this nice old image of the traditional Brit who sits in his shed all day, quietly stoking and smoking a pipe whilst he ponders over a tricky crossword, who never complains despite being kept waiting at the station for 5 hours (other than the occasional sigh or tut) and who absolutely DOES NOT spend the entire 2 hour train journey having a loud and vacuous phone conversation about their sex life whilst playing BubbleSaga or Angry Birds on their tablet
I have to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite here because as a child I used to insist on carrying around a small case of magic tricks and "entertaining" fellow passengers when the train broke down (which was a frequent occurrence back then) - quite frankly: if I met myself as a child now I would cheerfully stab myself to save anyone else the pain - but to be fair I was a hell of a lot quieter. I don't know whether it's a thing of getting older or what, but it seems that anyone below the age of 17 is unable to speak at any volume lower than a bellow that would start an avalanche
Finally, of course, I have recently discovered the local Folk Club Scene.
For those of you who don't know Folk Clubs are still quite common in the UK and they usually have one or many of the following attributes:
* Real Ale drinkers - people who insist that beer has to be made Traditionally and by some bloke using his bath tub - to be the real thing
* Acoustic instruments - they're still bitter about Dylan going electric
* songs written over a 100 years ago, usually about how grim it was being a miner/weaver/peasant, containing "fol-de-rol"s or heavy innuendo
* people old enough to have heard the songs the first time around
* and, to be fair, a really friendly and informal atmosphere that is a hell of a lot of fun
But what they don't have: is young people - and this is a thing I've heard and seen a lot of recently. On the stand-up course I did the teacher bemoaned the fact that the audience watching him now were the same people as 10-15 years ago and that no new audience was coming through - and it's the same in the Folk Clubs - I may be getting on a bit, but the large proportion of people there are 15-20 years older than me and I wasn't aware of anyone younger
Which is a bit of a shame - I'd hate these clubs to go out of business and to vanish like so many things because they clung onto a forgotten ideal of what the world was like
Which brings me to the final thing about getting old - becoming afraid of change. It's very easy to complain about things changing (as I've just proven) and history is full of people moaning that INSERT NEW FANGLED THING HERE is wrecking our society and changing things irretrievably but hey - change will happen regardless.
Better to accept it and move on: maybe therein lies the secret of eternal youth?
