Ancient and Modern

I guess, Dear Reader, that nobody who has reached their allotted three score and ten years on the planet , as I have, can fully understand what it is to be young at the present.  I should note here that I am past it. In fact I am 3 years past it, sitting here at 73 years and counting.  I will spout no such rubbish as ’70 is the new 40’. Unmitigated nonsense, 70 is the old 70, admittedly with the bells and whistles of modern medical advances but be aware, Dear Friends, I think like the old man that I am. What does this mean when I am out and about in society? Firstly it’s great still to be allowed out without supervision.

Society moves a lot quicker than I do mentally and physically. Innovation leaves me in its wake. Just as I think that I have understood something new I discover that events have moved forwards and what was the next best thing has become the last worst thing.

We all know, of course, that things which were acceptable in the past are no longer so. This came home to me when I was reading an excellent biography of Henry V by Dan Jones.  Henry V was an English king who ruled in the early 1400s. The Battle of Agincourt which he fought against the French in 1415 assured his legendary status. Shakespeare’s play of the same name helped, as did Laurence Olivier’s performance of the same during World War II, a less than subtle piece of wartime propaganda. Sorry, friends, I suddenly went all tangential on you, but that’s what old guys do! Anyhow during  King Harry’s  time there was a religious sect of Christianity called the Lollards. They were regarded by the Catholic Church as heretics and as such were liable to being burned at the stake, not a particularly ice cream and trifle outlook.  Some 100 or so years later, Henry VIII wanted a divorce which the Pope would not grant so the English king split from Rome and he set himself up as Head of the English Church. Much that the Lollards preached became not only acceptable but also the only route for Christianity to take in England at that time.  Protestantism became dominant in England. Catholicism arrived where the Lollards had been and had  their feet held to the fire, as well as the rest of them. That is a simplification of course. But my point is that the mores of society fluctuate very speedily. In my lifetime war hero and mathematical genius Alan Turing who cracked the Nazi’s enigma code, committed suicide because of his homosexuality.  Homosexual acts were illegal in the UK until fairly recently*. This man who saved so many lives through his genius was shunned and prosecuted for something which did no harm to others and was really nobody else’s business. He deserved a long and happy life with a partner of his choosing. Watch the movie, “The Imitation Game” for this shameful expose of what passed for justice at the time.

So what was acceptable then is unacceptable now and vice versa. But what, Dear Reader, society is discovering is that tolerant people can and do come across as intolerant on many occasions. We crack the whip of acceptance while each lash smacks of intolerance. I did much in my youth which makes me cringe with embarrassment  in the wee sma’ hours. If I let such thoughts grip me I will not get out of bed in the morning. Did young Davidson really say that? Did he really do that? Of course he did he was a Nightmare on Naïve Street as a youth and probably still is.

 “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Thus spake LP Hartley.

I think that I am more conscious of an aging mind than an aging body. Should I still be driving a car? Why did I forget so and so’ s name? What did I just do?

A few days ago, despite good intentions, I was at our local coffee shop, Vomero’s, and decided to add sugar to my coffee. I reached for a packet of brown sugar, flicked it with my finger, ripped it open, poured its contents into the garbage bin and dropped the wrapper into my flat white! My ‘good attentions’ were elsewhere or was  age a factor?  Then I had a flashback to Westminster College cafeteria where I spent three years learning how to be moderately useful in a school classroom. I remember doing exactly the same thing then, Dear Friends. I puffed my cheeks in relief. So when I am driving somewhere and take the wrong route and refuse to stop and ask the way, then I did that in my salad years too.  When I wake up in the morning and find my neck stiff and my back aching, then in the 1970s on Sunday mornings after Saturday’s game of rugby I was much, much more immobile. All this is very reassuring, don’t ye know.

Dear Reader, some pithy piece of wisdom floats through my memory, some well – respected person of  letters laying forth his aphorisms at the feet of the great unwashed. He said something along the lines that no old person wants to be young again. When I first read this I thought this was nonsense but now I am not so sure.  Like many of you I had my share of teenage angst and as I grew into my twenties it grew into a lack of confidence, a face permanently red with embarrassment because I had said or done the wrong thing. My body parts were always in the wrong place either my heart was on my sleeve or my knee forcibly in somebody else’s testicles. Fear not I am being metaphorical.  My temper was short, my anger was an insecurity that flared too often inwardly and unexpressed.  My thirties were easier, and my forties left me wondering what the hell I thought I had been doing in my green past.  

So it is hard now for me to exercise like I once did, hard for me not to nap in the afternoon, harder still to sleep after 5.30 a.m. But, Dear Friends, with all of this comes so much freedom. I do not need to produce a forceful conversation, my point of view does not matter. It can remain in a cobwebbed corner of the loft only occasionally venturing forth to teach a recalcitrant fly a lesson.  I am trying to cultivate the art of listening more rather than spouting forth the inanities which truly blossomed in the Spring of my existence.

Recently I had to complete a health survey which had all the usual questions about lifestyle. I learned that my diet was not very healthy. Actually that’s not true I always knew that I did not eat enough fruit and vegetables but chose to ignore that because a cheese and bacon butty is much more tasty. Did I smoke? Nope never smoked except that somebody once gave me a funny cigarette when I was travelling in India. What did I think? Well, I was very, very drunk at the time so it doesn’t count. Do I drink alcohol? Well, yes, but more than two pints of beer and I am full. As I grew older I grew into a love of red wine.  Good whisky still has a place in my heart. And then I look at my consumption of alcohol so far this year. Yep, red wine and a deuch an dorris at the end of Burns Night on January 25^th. Then two pints of beer on May 20^th, my birthday. So other than those two occasions I have not had a drop in the first half of 2025. I have not signed a pledge, nor found religion, I simply haven’t had the wish. I suppose that the wisdom of old age might suggest that alcohol helped get me through social occasions growing up. I loved pubs, I hated night clubs. I burbled around parties spouting the same old nonsense about what I did for a living, what do you do for a living; yes mine host and hostess are really nice people; true the bride is beautiful; do you like cats or dogs; or the really, truly most boring question which occurs all over the UK which is, what football team do you support? And then if you confess to supporting a famous team, the can of worms is open, the rabbit hole of players, championships, history is begun and rather than reaching for one glass off the waiter’s tray one grabs two and two fists oneself into the oblivion of George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Billy Bremner, Brian Clough.  At one point I remembered where I was for every FIFA World Cup Final since 1966 I am ashamed to say. Now I have the ideal conversation stopper by stating that I support the football team of the city of my birth, which is Aberdeen F.C. who have just won their first trophy in 35 years!

My contemporaries and I have had the occasional discussion about how history will view our age a century from now. I suspect our dealing with mental illness, homelessness and the drug crisis will not get a passing grade.  Nor do I expect the fact that we drink bottled water when that which comes from the tap is perfectly good will receive other than a scratching of the head.  We have had well over 3000 years to learn that populist demagoguery lies through its collective teeth and yet, and yet………..

“Time is a sort of river of passing events and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept away and another takes its place and it too will be swept away.”

                                                                           Marcus Aurelius.

Dear Friends, I should call it a day soon. I am becoming conscious of that old maxim that there is a fine line between a diabolical diatribe and a hostage situation.  But every corner of every sentence around which I peer I see something else I want to rant about. Amor Towles in his collection of short stories says that the best things of growing old are to-

‘end one’s day with a few sips of an old Scotch, a few pages of an old novel and a king size bed without distractions.”

Sorry, Dear Reader, not quite ready to let you off the hook yet.

Like many of you, I become frustrated with people in power who lie. As a teacher I used to tell my pupils that I expected them to do wrong because that is part of growing up, indeed I would say an essential part of the process. If they shoved Jimmy’s shoe down the toilet bowl then come clean when asked.  We can sort out Jimmy’s urine-clad footwear with ease; the mazy morass of lies is far worse and far more of a concern.  Friends, I suggest that it is very difficult to get that message across to children when The News is full of liars and charlatans. Corruption and lack of moral compass are ancient facts of life as well as modern ones.

“Be careful when you follow the masses, sometimes the ‘m’ is silent.”

As an oldster I have come to realise that,

“One will never reach one’s destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”

So I guess when one reaches the winter of one’s existence, one needs to hold back on pontification, obfuscation, patronisation, condescension and once one has exhausted the ‘-ions’, then one also needs to write a list of ‘-isms’ because all of these are not recognised as the wisdom of the experienced but more the ramblings of the old.  One could wish to have indigenous blood because the native peoples have real respect for their elders.  Or one could simply come clean and freely admit that the substantial woman is about to sing and bring down the curtain on one’s life. I sort of like the sunlight analogy which I recently read:-

“Your shadow exists because light that travelled about 93 million miles, approximately 8 minutes of travel time, was deprived of reaching the last few feet of its goal because of you.”

It seems to me that most of the world glories in a bit of sunlight. It brings joy and happiness and, with its close friend rain, brings growth and prosperity. But it just takes one shadow in the wrong place to get in the way. Dear Friends, I see at least 5 or 6 shadows who are getting in the way of human progress at the moment. Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, The Chinese government in the PRC shamelessly exploiting child labour in its lithium mining, the so called ‘Great Religions’ of the World. It is a disgrace that wicked, evil, large egos block the goodness that is most people.  It is nonsense that dogmas, doctrines, schisms based on an unproven idea, that of a deity, results in death and destruction.  Bad people and bad ideas cast  shadows over our sunny uplands, block the progress of humanity through character flaws and foolish beliefs.

Thanks for reading.

Oops, couldn’t leave off without this George Orwell  observation as it seems particularly relevant in the United States at the moment.

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act”.

Aw dun.

*Homosexuality became legal in England and Wales in 1967. In Scotland it didn’t happen until 1980.