Older

Today, I realised I am getting old.

Of course I am aware that time is moving on, that when I say how old I am it is a scarily large number now. I know in a 'years lived' kind of way that I am heading towards old age. What I meant by that word "realised" though, is something deeper, something more spiritual than the incontrovertible, clinical ticking of the clock we all hear. It is not the fact that my body is starting to refuse to work in the smooth, efficient manner that it always did, the aches and pains that used to last a day now lingering on, debilitating and griping. No, it is not a physical reminder that prompted this. Nor is it technology that has defeated me signalling my imminent demise. I am still able to buy tech gadgets and operate them to pretty good effect. Granted, I tend to refer to the manual rather more than I used to: gone are the days when the instructions for a device would lay in a drawer, unread throughout its lifetime. It is possible that I am not the early adopter that I once was, preferring now for others to grapple with the foibles of the latest must-have device so that I, the latecomer to the party, can make use of all the online forum discussions to get answers when even the manual can't help. And talking of online, it is not that cesspit/paradise that makes me feel old. I can still recognise and even use memes appropriately, most of the language is still relatable (well, on the sites I use it is) and I am still genuinely thrilled when I alight upon a site that has content that is thought-provoking or beautiful or funny in some way. It is definitely not the internet that makes me feel old.

I have not yet felt the need to go on a cruise. Staying in a single hotel, whether floating or securely attached to the land, for a couple of weeks just does not excite me in any way. In my mind, I associate them, rightly or wrongly, with old people and, until very recently as I am explaining, I didn't feel old. Full disclosure here: we have twice been on a holiday where we travelled around countries by coach. In both cases - India and Namibia - we just felt that putting together our own holiday online by renting a car and booking flights and hotels might prove difficult: in Namibia, we were unsure where the hotels were and what we wanted to see and in the case of India, having looked at videos of Indian city driving, Elaine said no way would we be driving ourselves! No, in the main, we still like to 'do our own thing', putting together itineraries ourselves and sharing the adventure between the two of us. So I am not feeling old enough to delegate picking where we go to others just yet. My wardrobe is still largely beige free. Someone noted in a Facebook post recently how the uniform of the older gentleman tends towards the non-colour that is beige: shirt, windcheater (look it up kids!) and 'slacks' all in beige with, maybe, a beige cap to top it off. My wardrobe still contains colour, pretty eye-scorching colour in some cases, and I hope it will continue always to so so. Similarly, I have no shoes with velcro fastenings and my slippers are not made of a fuzzy man-made fabric in tartan but bright red, sanzzy German things, so it is not my wardrobe that made me feel old.

The reason I thought I am getting old is that I have found myself dipping back into my past more than I ever used to. When I say "the past", I mean the properly distant past, back when I was a child. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself imagining in great detail, the house where my great aunt and uncle lived. They were the only living relatives of my mum (well, the only ones she kept in contact with), so we used to visit them on a fairly regular basis. We lived in London at the time and they lived near Witchurch in Shropshire so it used to be a bit of a trek via coach to go and see them. I recall the pantry off the kitchen with the cold shelf and the meat safe with its mesh metal sides and I remember them getting their first fridge. They never used the front door: that was for visitors they didn't know, the 'official' entrance so to speak. Everyone else used the side entrance, just beyond which was the WC, a sort of semi-outdoor loo. It was inside so far as it was inside the building and using it did not involve putting on boots to traipse to the bottom of the garden. But it was 'outside' in temperature terms. The house had no central heating and relied on the heat from the range in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room (also kept for 'special' use such as a particular TV program they might want to watch) so that the loo was freezing cold in winter. I can still recall the smell of the little paraffin heater that my uncle kept lit in winter to make 'using the facilities' a bearable action. I remember those occasions when I was lucky enough to get to sleep in the room with the iron bedstead. As a child, it was practically a mountaineering feat to climb up, the mattress was so far off the ground. Once up and between the sheets, the weight of the multiple blankets and the eiderdown quilt seems almost to crush me - in a comforting, cuddly manner - into the deepest of sleeps. In the small room next door was where I discovered that Santa didn't exist. I was opening my presents that Christmas Day and I saw the 'St Michael' label in my Xmas jumper. I just somehow knew that Santa didn't shop at M&S...

That house and those memories are just one example: there have been quite a few more recently, recollections that have popped up before my mind's eye with amazing clarity. Rightly or wrongly, I always associated this dwelling on the past, the rummaging through memories as being something that 'old' people did. Younger people are too busy with actual life to spend a great deal of time looking backwards but at a certain point, we have the time to reflect and remember. Perhaps it is natural as we get towards the 'wrong' end of our lives that we rake over the past to sift out the good (and the bad) memories. I don't believe this to be a bad thing, to spend some time in the past. Yes, there are regrets that surface along the way and, perhaps, at some remove from the events, we can see now why we did what we did or didn't do what we should have. Whatever, this critical reflection is something I have not really indulged in before and, whether it is due to the actual passage of time or just late-onset adulthood, I don't know. I am sure, however, that it is the first time I have felt like I'm getting old.