Ed Halliday's Blog - Posts Tagged "youth"
Getting old? Me? Surely not.
It’s a big question, I know, but how do you know when you are getting old? Is it when you start to see grey hairs? I certainly hope not as that would put an awful lot of us in the ‘one foot in the grave’ category very quickly. Lines in your face deep enough to lose a cotton bud in, never to be seen again? Possibly. Commenting on how young policemen look these days? Just using the sentence ‘these days’ must surely qualify.
For some time I have been trying to ignore this question in the hope that it will just go away and no one will notice that I am any different to how I was twenty years ago, but it keeps poking it’s head up, like the troll in the story of the Billy Goats Gruff, and shouting “who’s that trip trapping over my bridge with their zimmer frame?”
The first time I realised I might have to face the inevitable was when my 28 year old son announced that he and his wife were trying for a baby. “This would of course make you a grandfather” roared the troll as he popped his ugly head up from under the bridge.
Ok, grandfathers are generally old, but not always, and anyway they are only trying so until they announce the impending patter of tiny feet of doom the troll can stay firmly below the parapet.
And he did until last week.
I have been convincing myself for some time, whilst squinting at my manuscripts, that my eyesight is fine. Really it is. Ok, so I cooked the dinner for 30 minutes too many the other day because the inconsiderate people who package food these days had made the writing so small that you needed a radio telescope to read the instructions, but my eyes are fine, honestly. Well they are now, because I have finally got glasses. I didn’t really have the option of pretending any more, bearing in mind you really do need to be able to see in order to write for a living. My wife reckons they make me look distinguished, which is wife code for “you have reached old age but I love you so I’m not going to burst the bubble of your youthfulness” which is sweet, but…
“Lots of people wear glasses” I convinced myself, “even kids wear them" I reasoned as I pushed the trolls head firmly downwards, and then disaster.
Of all things to prompt the troll once again, it could not have been a more mundane thing. This evening I was reading the packaging on a newly purchased shower valve. Not terribly exciting I know, or terribly literary. It would be so much better to be saying “on a jar of Beluga caviar” or “on a box of Cuban cigars” but no, it was a plain ordinary shower valve, the old one having ceased to function due to lime scale apparently. I know you are now thinking “what on earth could be printed on the packaging of such an item that it might provoke such a reaction?”
Let me tell you, it was horrific.
It was an out and out boast by the manufacturer that they had been producing quality shower valves since 1981, and that you could trust a company that had been plying their trade for so many years.
“1981” I roared, “but I remember 1981 like it was yesterday! How can I entrust my waterworks to a company that only started making these things in the same year that Shakin’ Stevens was singing about a green door?”
The ugly troll smiled, and ducked back down under his bridge for a good laugh at my expense.
Cheers,
Ed Halliday
Author of:- The Expected Demise of Bernard Fish, Burnt Toast and Bent Noses, the almost perfect plot, The Grinning Dog
For some time I have been trying to ignore this question in the hope that it will just go away and no one will notice that I am any different to how I was twenty years ago, but it keeps poking it’s head up, like the troll in the story of the Billy Goats Gruff, and shouting “who’s that trip trapping over my bridge with their zimmer frame?”
The first time I realised I might have to face the inevitable was when my 28 year old son announced that he and his wife were trying for a baby. “This would of course make you a grandfather” roared the troll as he popped his ugly head up from under the bridge.
Ok, grandfathers are generally old, but not always, and anyway they are only trying so until they announce the impending patter of tiny feet of doom the troll can stay firmly below the parapet.
And he did until last week.
I have been convincing myself for some time, whilst squinting at my manuscripts, that my eyesight is fine. Really it is. Ok, so I cooked the dinner for 30 minutes too many the other day because the inconsiderate people who package food these days had made the writing so small that you needed a radio telescope to read the instructions, but my eyes are fine, honestly. Well they are now, because I have finally got glasses. I didn’t really have the option of pretending any more, bearing in mind you really do need to be able to see in order to write for a living. My wife reckons they make me look distinguished, which is wife code for “you have reached old age but I love you so I’m not going to burst the bubble of your youthfulness” which is sweet, but…
“Lots of people wear glasses” I convinced myself, “even kids wear them" I reasoned as I pushed the trolls head firmly downwards, and then disaster.
Of all things to prompt the troll once again, it could not have been a more mundane thing. This evening I was reading the packaging on a newly purchased shower valve. Not terribly exciting I know, or terribly literary. It would be so much better to be saying “on a jar of Beluga caviar” or “on a box of Cuban cigars” but no, it was a plain ordinary shower valve, the old one having ceased to function due to lime scale apparently. I know you are now thinking “what on earth could be printed on the packaging of such an item that it might provoke such a reaction?”
Let me tell you, it was horrific.
It was an out and out boast by the manufacturer that they had been producing quality shower valves since 1981, and that you could trust a company that had been plying their trade for so many years.
“1981” I roared, “but I remember 1981 like it was yesterday! How can I entrust my waterworks to a company that only started making these things in the same year that Shakin’ Stevens was singing about a green door?”
The ugly troll smiled, and ducked back down under his bridge for a good laugh at my expense.
Cheers,
Ed Halliday
Author of:- The Expected Demise of Bernard Fish, Burnt Toast and Bent Noses, the almost perfect plot, The Grinning Dog
