Fighting the visible signs of ageing

I’m getting on a bit, aren’t I?

I mean, look at that picture of me up there. You may have been thinking of words like “thin” and “fashion”, but probably only if “on top” and “disaster” are added immediately afterwards.

There is good and bad in this. After fighting it gamely for years, there is probably little more satisfying in a man’s life, than finally reaching the point where you suddenly realise you just don’t give a damn about anyone else’s opinion of you any more.

On the other hand, there’s that desperate, lingering death of your sense of decorum and style, as you frantically try to convince yourself, friends, colleagues and anyone else unfortunate enough to come into visual contact with you, that you are still, resolutely “with it”. Sadly, the “it” in question is usually a massive confusion over what you think is trendy, and what actually IS trendy.

This can be detected by increasing use of bold colours and wearing clothes that look good on someone half your age, but make you look like you’ve raided a teenager’s washing line after getting confused on the way to the loo at 2am, and locking yourself outside, butt naked. Again.

I seem to have not yet swum ashore to roam the lush fields of blissful, uncaring, wear-what-the-hell-you-like-ness, and am still splashing hopelessly in the shallows off-shore, whilst dark waves of poor fashion choices wash over me, each one leaving me more pathetically garmented than the one before.

Before the final tsunami washes me inland, to a place where slippers with tassles are thoroughly acceptable, and socks with sandals are positively encouraged, I recently purchased a pair of trousers in a moderately fashionable store, the cut of which is so “now”, the crotch appears to be significantly roomier and lower than I was expecting. Oh, and they’re a sort of faded, smokey, burgundy colour. I know. I regretted my purchase approximately half a second after the second digit of my PIN was entered, but it was too late by then. The young assistant was already eyeing me suspiciously, and probably had the Fashion Police on autodial.

It also occurred to me that other people this side of forty I’ve seen wearing trousers of this hue are usually about 70, and called Neville or Quentin.

Couple this shocking choice of legwear with some other things I noticed about myself this week, and it’s fairly safe to say I’m very close indeed to the last, hopeless, decision before finally the dimming spark of life in the dark corner of my brain labelled “in touch” gets reallocated to worrying about that cat being in the back yard again.

Here they are then – brace yourselves, it’s not pretty reading, but you’ll see what I mean:

I rediscovered how gorgeous and life-affirming custard is.
At a horticultural show (which is bad enough), I found myself thinking “my courgettes are bigger than those!” without any hint of innuendo, only genuine, vegetable based envy.
I ironed a duvet cover.

See what I mean?

This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail on the 30th of August 2013, where it was retitled "New trousers were regretted", which completely reverses the position from last week, where their title was better than mine. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here

It received a whopping 48 word edit this week, and the whole bit about raiding a teenager's washing line vanished, along with the end of the courgette section. And for some reason, they replaced "tsunami" with "wave".

If you do want to see the picture of me the column refers to, feel free to nip over to the paper's website at the link above, but make sure you're sitting down, and haven't eaten anything recently.

My heartfelt thanks to you for popping by and having a read of my columns here. Until mid-month, it looked like I was heading for my lowest stats for a couple of years, but the last two weeks have boosted the numbers back to around my average. Some days it's a bit dispiriting writing stuff without knowing if anyone is actually reading it, so even if you're a 'bot - thanks for taking the time to drop in!

I'm currently having a touch of "Why am I here?!" with twitter, so am a bit quieter than usual over there. Generally, it's a bit of a low mojo time for me, but you never know what's round the corner, eh? Maybe a wandering national newspaper editor will pick up a local paper on holiday, and sign me up for thousands of pounds based on what he reads.

Or not.

(Early XTC on the stereo today - 1979's "Drums And Wires".)

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

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