Now That Hurt

I pride myself on looking younger (and hotter) than I actually am. Just one week ago, when renewing my gym membership, I told the girl behind the counter that I now qualify for a cheaper rate because I’m over 55, and waited for and duly received the gratifying “really?”.

So I suppose I deserve what happened yesterday.

I was last to read at the Writers’ Workshop, so when I had finished we all got up to leave. A young lady came up to me and told me that she really enjoyed my piece. She said it rang very true, exactly as little boys behave.

I thanked her for saying, so, feeling inside the warm glow that only true smugness can bring.

Then she said: “Did you base it on your grandson?”

 

Both Sides Now

From the personal ads in our freebie newspaper: “Dublin Woman, 79, seeks older male companion”…
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I’m fed up with younger men, guys in their 60s who think they’re great just because their hips are the same age as they are. They all saw The Graduate as teenagers and have been obsessed with older women ever since. It wouldn’t be so bad if any of them looked like Dustin Hoffman, but most of them look more like Dustin the Turkey, with their scrawny faces and scraggy necks.

I’ve decided to look for an older man. Not that I’ve given up all thoughts of, er, that, I mean Joan Collins is 79 too and still goes like a train, but I’d like a gentler man, a gentle man, a gentleman. We could get a dog and take it for walks along the beach. In fact we could get a tortoise and take it for walks along the beach.

And we could sit companionably reading, and use our free-travel passes to go on day trips to Killarney or Belfast. We could talk about the old times, when you had to saw loaves into lumpy slices with a bread-knife the size of a hack-saw. We could talk about when you could buy broken biscuits, or just one cigarette, or Mackeson stout. It’d be nice just to have someone to talk to. I’ve been alone too long.

We wouldn’t grow old together, it’s too late for that, but we could be old together, and that might just be enough.

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I’m going to ring her. I’ve hemmed and hawed about it for a week, but I’ve decided to chance it.

After all, you’re only young once, and in my case that was an awfully long time ago. You don’t get a lot of invitations when you’re 83, and while she wasn’t writing to me personally she was aiming at a pretty small target group, it’s unlikely that she’s going to get a thousand of us wheezing our way up to her door.

I’m not over the hill yet, though I can certainly see over the brow. I still have my own hair, though not that much of it, and I can still waltz, so long as there’s a chair nearby to sit down in afterwards.

And it will drive the kids mad. I’ll tell them I’ve met a young wan, which will not be a lie, and let their imaginations do the rest. They’ll ask me if I’m off my rocker, or my medication, and I’ll say “oh, that reminds me, I must see if I can get Viagra on my medical card” just to see the look on their faces.

Not that I’m expecting any of, er, that, though Joan Collins is 79 and still goes like a train, I’d just like someone you’d call a lady, though someone proud and strong, the kind of girl to whom the expression “I gave him a piece of my mind” doesn’t mean she’s had a lobotomy. We could sit in the garden together on sunny evenings, and I could fetch her a blanket when it started to get cool. We could talk about the old times, when we only had three channels and had to walk over to the TV to change them. We could talk about where we were the night of the moon landing, or when Elvis pelvissed on the telly, or when JFK was shot (I’d tell her I was standing on a grassy knoll, just to see the look of surprise and then the eyes-up-to-heaven smile on her face). We wouldn’t have shared memories, but we’d have memories to share.

I’m going to ring her. We won’t grow old together, it’s too late for that, but we could be old together, and that might just be enough.

Waltzing With Tilda Again

HOTDOG are back.

tHe irish lOngiTudinal stuDy On aGeing (TILDA to themselves, HOTDOG to this blog, and I’m really hoping that one day one of their researchers says “everyone seems to think we’re called HOTDOG and we can’t find out why”) called again on Monday. Two years ago ago they selected a numbers of houses at random and asked people over 50 would they tart in a major long-term study during which they would call every two years to monitor how our health, lifestyle and financial situation have changed or otherwise, using to data collected to influence Government thinking, as they put it, “towards making Ireland the best place in the world to grow old”.

I am at lower end of their target age-spread (since the spouses of the over-50s are asked to participate too Mrs Tin is even lower, now taking part for the second time while still not having reached the age of 50). There will be people more than 30 years older than me taking part, so I can understand why they read out three words and got me to call them back, asked did I feel out of breath after climbing one flight of stairs and do I dress myself (I answered yes in the belief that they were asking did I put on my own clothes, though if they actually meant “have you ever heard the phrase ‘you’re not going in that, are you?’” then I may have given them false information).

In a section where we’d to rate statements on a scale of five from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree one of the statements was “I am better than most people, and I know it”. I’m sorry, but                                                                                     they asked for honesty.

I felt that there was a sense of sadness in the overall tone of the questioning, though. I was asked whether I ever feel anxious, or stressed, or depressed and ok, they’ve got me there. But they asked do I ever feel worthless, or fearful of walking alone, or that I would be better off dead, and obviously these are questions that they need to know the answers to.

But I thought that there were too many of these. They gave the impression that I am marching year by year towards the town of Oldie, and that it a bleak, depressing, soul-destroying place. But I have a dad and friends (many of them here) who seem to embrace and love the age at which they are, and lead rich and interesting lives, and the tone of questioning did not seem to allow for that possibility.

They never seem to have heard of this poem, which reflects the way I intend to behave (I already have a purple polo-shirt that I wear to work).

I wasn’t asked do I ever laugh. Are we not supposed to?

Rear View Mirror

This morning I sneaked out of the office to get my hair cut .

It was no problem, since I was back in 15 minutes, just ten euro poorer. A quick, cheap haircut is one of the advantages of being a bloke. The other two are being born with an innate understanding of the offside rule (with especially gifted males this can be in up to three sports) and the ability to belch all five vowels of the alphabet in one go (women, on the other hand, live five years longer, which kind-of makes a talent for mellifluous burping seem a bit feeble).

The barber shop, complete with red-and-white pole, is just yards from our office, and they do an excellent job. I have only one complaint. When they have finished they pick up a mirror and show you the back of your head.

I’ve never been sure what the point of that is. Women pay a couple of hundred quid to their stylist, so will of course want to view the creation from every possible angle (including directly above, in case they should walk under a ladder which has a friend of theirs up it). We men do not have stylists, because our hairstyle, if that’s not too grand a word for it, hasn’t changed since Humphrey Bogart’s time, apart from outbreaks of sideburns during the dafter decades.

Einstein once said that if you could look through a telescope powerful enough you would be able to see the back of your own head. Tellingly, though, he didn’t bother building it, despite the fact that he himself had hair like a Jedward with his toe stuck in a wall socket. He knew that there would be no point. All men look away as quickly as possible, muttering “yes, yes, that’s grand”. No man has ever said “my God, that’s far too short, stick some back on”.

The reason that we all look away at once is quite simple. While laughter lines, greyness, paunches and wrinkles can all be put down, however unconvincingly, to living the good life, the ever-changing state of the back of our heads is irrefutable proof that we are getting old.

When I was young my hair covered all of my head like the roof of a car, protecting my skull from rain, hailstones and birdshit. Somewhere along the way God decided that I needed an upgrade to include a sunroof, at no extra cost. Over time this sunroof has grown. In the brief millisecond before I looked away in horror this morning I noticed that my bald patch now covers about the same expanse of my head as the Arctic does of Earth.

If it gets any bigger, I’m going to look like an American pick-up truck.

The Test of Time

I have written here before that I am taking part in a study about ageing. The study is known as TILDA (or HOTDOG to readers of this blog), and will monitor the progress of selected over-50s as we age through the coming years.

I’ve already done the home interview and the written questionnaire, and today was the third part, the health assessment. I’ve just returned from three hours in the TILDA Centre, having faced more tests than an alien turning up unexpectedly in Roswell. In other words, I’ve been HOTDOG’s jumping frog.

And so, rather bizarrely, has Mrs Tin. Although she’s still a long way short of 50 (and I’ve typed that sentence without her even standing over me while I did it) they apparently need the partners of over-50s to take the tests too. I can only assume that they want to establish whether young wans fall apart quicker if they spend too much time in the company of older men, rather as owners of bulldogs will grow to look like them over time.

Anyway, I was given memory tests, eyesight tests, blood pressure tests, heart-rate tests (bit of a surprise for them there). I did one of those awful tests where you have to match shapes, or pick the next one in a sequence from a range of options. This is the type of test I was always shite at in school, the type which persuaded me from an early age never to attempt engineering, or to try to assemble anything bought in IKEA.

As a natural show-off  (huh, never would have guessed, I hear you say)  I proudly read the eye-chart practically down to the makers’ name at the bottom, called back the list of words I had to memorise not just correctly, but in the order that I was given them, and came up with 32 words beginning with ‘F’ in just one minute (I’d have done even better here, but unfortunately the word “fellatio” entered my head (um, unfortunate choice of phrase there) and for a panic-stricken five seconds I could think of nothing else before the word “falafel” thankfully arrived to rescue me.

They measured my weight and height, and I hope that those of you who’d love to weigh less will not hate me when I say that I was delighted to learn that I am the heaviest I’ve ever been. I am 10 stone 1 pound, and as a man who never weighed more than eight stone until I was 30 (thanks to the Tinman Diet, consisting of 40 cigarettes a day and no food, I should bring out a book) I regard this as great news.

I wasn’t so thrilled about the height, though. I have always regarded myself as being five-foot-five-and-a-half, and have persuaded myself that the “and-a-half” is what prevents me from being a real short-arse. It seems, though, that I am five-foot-five (I got her to do it twice, and then made her show me), and can almost hear the inner me sneering “huh, you think you’re a big fella, don’t ya”.

I’ve always found it interesting that there are only little old ladies. The phrase “tall old ladies” does not exist. So I’m hoping that I was just wrong about my height all along, since otherwise my belief that you grow shorter as you grow older must be true.

And if I’ve lost half an inch already, then by the time I’m 80 I’ll only be visible under a microscope.

Waltzing with TILDA

As I reported on Saturday, the lady from HOTDOG arrived for my interview this evening.

The interview, which their leaflet predicted would take 90 minutes, actually took two-an-a half hours. I’d have thought that perhaps this is because I’m getting old, were it not for the fact that the whole point is that everyone they’re interviewing is getting old.

It was great fun, though quite comprehensive. She did indeed give me a memory test, and also quizzed me about my health, economic circumstances, number of friends and even my sex life (which was, unfortunately, another memory test).

She is making an appointment for my health assessment in Trinity (excellent, one more blog topic), and gave me a card thanking me for my time, and informing me that I will shortly receive a cheque from them for my participation. The cheque will be for twenty euro, which should keep me in incontinence pads for at least a week.

I was also given a keychain with a supermarket token built in:

The fact that it says TILDA on it kind of makes a mockery of the whole confidentiality aspect. I find that endearing, so needless to say I have attached it to my keyring and fully intend to carry it everywhere.

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation

I’m going to be taking part in a study about ageing.

A lady called to the door yesterday and said our house had been chosen at random to be part of the sample. She then asked was there anyone in the house over 50. When I said I was, she said “really?”  in a surprised voice, and with that simple piece of acting she had me hooked.

The study is known as TILDA, apparently from ”The Irish LongituDinal study on Ageing”. I have to say that I’m not a fan of acronyms that use letters from the middle of words. They might just as well have opted for “tHe irish lOngiTudinal stuDy On aGeing”, and HOTDOG is how I shall be referring to it from here on.

The third word in the name (my fingers are too old to keep typing it) is there because this is an ongoing study. In other words they will call back to me for updates every three years or so, until such time as Mrs Tin opens the the door to them and, before they say anything, just shakes her head sorrowfully.   

According to their website, some of the questions they are interested in answering are what happens to people’s memory as they age, do people have enough savings to provide for their older age, and what happens to people’s memory as they age (they might also like to ask whether people’s jokes get more and more obvious as they age).

The lady is coming back on Tuesday to interview me for about 90 minutes (she’ll probably ask do I have any health issues, so I hope she’s got a really good battery in her laptop). I will then be given a questionnaire to fill out in my own time, and finally I’ll have to go to Trinity College for tests (as I’ve said before, Tinson1 is studying Science at Trinity, and if any of this involves being tested by him then I’m outta there).

The HOTDOG leaflet says that I’ll be helping to “develop health, social and economic policies and services that will benefit all people living in Ireland”, so I already smugly feel that I’m doing a better job than the current Government.

It also says that my answers to Tuesday’s interview will be treated in the strictest confidence, and I’m sure that they will.

Except, of course, that I can’t wait to tell you lot all about it.

Movin’ On Up

Just when I was starting to feel better about myself, my health and my future life prospects my best friend since our schooldays has become a grandfather.

I apparently once said (a friend recently reminded me that I said this years ago, and I’m astonished at how perceptive I was back then) that people stay at the age at which you meet them first. As an example of what I mean by this, think of Little Old Ladies that you see pushing wheely shopping bags.  To me they are Little Old Ladies, probably aged about 70. My mother-in-law is 74, and to other people probably looks like the archetypal LOL, but because I met her first when she was in her forties I think of her as young. I will never see her as older than these ladies.

Because my mum and dad were grown-up since my earliest memories, I remember them as confident, knowing parents. Yet they were in their early 30s, and probably felt young and clueless at parenting, much as I still do now.

I met Schoolfriend when we were 12. We were inseperable all through school (people used to think we were brothers) and have remained friends ever since. His wife has been my friend nearly as long, since he and I met her when we did a joint drama production with a neighbouring girls’ school. She was so determined not to miss the wedding of Mrs Tin and I that she brought her 4-day-old baby with her. This baby, the youngest person at our wedding, is now the proud mum.

But although Schoolfriend is married and has grown-up children, in my mind he and I are still kids, so I was startled last night to hear the news. I wasn’t expecting him to suddenly evolve into someone who wears cardigans, takes his teeth out and cleans them in company and tells interminable rambling stories about life during the Emergency. (Brief diversion here for my overseas readers. “The Emergency” is how the Irish referred to the Second World War during its duration. We have a terrific capacity for euphemism. Thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland was known as “The Troubles”, which sounds as if the country was merely suffering from some mild bowel irritation. The current recession will in times to come be known as “The Comeuppance”. If there is ever an atomic war the resulting nuclear winter will be referred to as “The Overcast Days”).

And of course Schoolfriend hasn’t changed at all. But what he has done is make me realise that I am moving up one generation, that my kids are getting close to being adults themselves, and that eventually a new layer will be added beneath them (I’m going to have to start thinking of names – Tingranddaughter1, for example, would take a lot of typing by fingers which I can feel getting more arthritic ever since last night’s phonecall).

The sheer joy in his voice on the phone from the hospital was lovely to hear. I know they’re going to love and dote on baby Megan, and I know they’ll make wonderful, and very unconventional, grandparents. And I’ve realised that my time for that gets nearer year by year, and that I’ll love it too when it happens.

I just don’t want it to happen too soon. I’m only a kid, after all.

Paranoid Android

Firstly, here comes the science bit. Concentrate…

There are two main types of Tax Credit in our system. There is the Personal Credit, that everyone gets, just for existing, and the PAYE Credit, which those of us who get taxed at source are granted. It doesn’t apply to the Self-Employed, or to Company Directors.

In other words, everyone gets the Personal Credit, but not everyone gets the PAYE Credit. Simple?

Apparently not. My Tax Credits Cert for 2009 gives me the PAYE Credit, but not the Personal one. So unless the Tax Office have made a mistake (and this is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that I should suggest this) there is only one possibility.

In a post about a trip to the dentist last November (don’t worry, even I’m fed up with links now), I said this:

“This will be my third crown, as well as all the Tinman pacemaker stuff. What percentage of my body weight has to comprise man-made materials before I’m officially classed as an Artificial Life Form?”

Whatever that percentage is, I have obviously reached it. It seems I no longer count as human and, while the Revenue are willing to recognise that I do actually contribute to society by giving me the PAYE Credit, they refuse to grant me the Personal one since they seem to reckon that I’m not, well, a person.

Back when I was starting this blog, and was trying to think of a name for it, one name I toyed with mirrored one of my favourite movie lines. In the film Men in Black (well, you didn’t think it was going to be from something by Bergman or Fellini, did you?) an ambulance driver arrives into the Morgue with a body, makes a load of tasteless remarks to Morgue Doctor Linda Fiorentino, and leaves. After he’s gone, Linda mutters “I hate the living”. I’ve often felt the same way.

And I hate you all even more now (no offence) since it turns out I’ve to pay more tax than you lot. I wonder if Data is taxed by Starfleet in the same way.

And I also wonder what’s going to happen when I reach retirement age (a mind-bogglingly mere 15 years away). I presume that I’ll get the Old Age Pension since, robot or not, I will be old. They probably won’t give me the fuel allowance though, since they’ll think that I can’t feel the cold (they’ll be bloody wrong there, I can tell you). Will they give me free bus travel? Probably not, they’ll expect me to be able to walk forever, like the Duracell bunny. In fact, they’ll believe (and I apologise in advance for what I’m about to do to you all here) that I would walk five hundred miles.

And what about the butter vouchers? They’ll probably figure I won’t need to eat, so unless I can persuade them that I intend to spread myself in butter to keep myself from rusting I’m unlikely to get them either.

And what about the next step after retirement, when I am, er, no more?

Will I be buried, or re-cycled?

Paraskavedekatriaphobia…

…..that’s easy for you to say.

Our office party is on tonight. All the staff and their partners are invited to the Radisson SAS in Cavan to eat turkey and, er, ham, to drink beer at a free bar and then stay overnight. There will be 233 people there.

My boss last year (not really)

Some may say that this is over-extravagant while banks are crashing, while jobs are dwindling and while Bob the Builder is presumably now Just Plain Bob. The company’s attitude, though, is that the staff have worked just as hard this year as last, so why cut their party? They also take the attitude that if everything really goes badly, in 18 months time it’s unlikely they’ll be saying  “if only we hadn’t held that party – it would have made all the difference between solvency and bankruptcy”.

Anyway, I’m delighted. As I say, there are 233 people going, so it’ll be the biggest birthday party I’ve ever had.

For today is my birthday, and, as you’ll have noticed, it’s the 13th (I know it’s the 14th where you are, LK, but we Irish have always been a bit behind the times). And, back in 1957 (aargh!), the 13th of December was indeed a Friday.

So the title of this post is not Mandarin, Klingon or indeed Keyshitatrandom, it is the term for Fear of Friday the Thirteenth.

The great advantage of being born on F the T is that it means you can never be superstitious. It’s hard to take rubbish about magpies, walking under ladders or breaking a mirror seriously once you’ve survived bring born on the The Day Most Fraught With Peril. Magpies are bad because they are loud and steal other birds’ nests, walking under a ladder is unlucky only if the guy at the top drops something on you (you could say the same for walking under a bridge), and breaking a mirror is bad because, well, you’ve to buy a new mirror.

In the office last week we got new Golf Umbrellas delivered to give to our clients, and I opened one to see what they were like. “You can’t open that in here,” said MyAgeGirl (the only other Over-50 in the office, though very few people know it), “it’ll bring you bad luck”.

“Jesus, MAG,” I said, “You’re talking to a guy with heart problems. What more bad luck can I get?”.

Which makes me think. In the past 18 months I’ve had 17 blackouts, three operations, and a pacemaker. I have scars on my forehead from one of my falls. I have a condition where I don’t fully experience things anymore. I’d a tooth taken out yesterday and a crown put in. I’d to pay €470 for that, and last week I’d to pay €100 to get the heater fixed in my car.

Not only that, but Ireland were awful in the Rugby World Cup, the world economy is banjaxed and the Cassini spacecraft has stopped transmitting (I know these things aren’t just my bad luck, but I’m on a roll now). Chrysler and GM are going broke. Pigs can kill you. Martina Navratilova didn’t win I’m a Celebrity. It’s pissing rain.

None of this, of course, is due to when I was born. Touch wood.

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(Ps. As my birthday present to you lot, a word of advice. Don’t ever type “Office Party” into Google Images. And, if you do, don’t look at the fourth picture along.)

Look, I told you NOT to.