Sixty Two

A sideways look at age, Blogging, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour, Memories, My Life, Real life through the kaleidoscope of age 4 Minutes
Some of the things that are kicking about my office and make me feel my age.

Today is my birthday.  I am sixty two.  I made the decision to use a new photograph as an avatar, which I hope should have changed today.*  (It may not have done – I am certainly not sufficiently confident of my IT aptitude to put money on it myself.)  Providing the photo is there – I hope it is, I hated the last one – you can gauge for yourself the stories it has to tell about this particular ageing male.  For instance, the small scab on the end of my nose tells you that I am unable to safely carry a three-year old granddaughter through a wood without snagging my snout on a bramble.  The non-smiling concentration speaks of a total selfie-taking ineptitude bordering on the bloody-minded.  I need an extra thumb.  The one I have available merely ejects the phone from my hand.  In order to use the other thumb, I have to lean forward and I appear to be leering horribly at the camera from an angle that suggests that I might be more used to having my likeness ‘snapped’ by security cameras, mid-burglary.  I really have no idea why I always emerge from a smart phone lens looking like a creepy uncle.  I never really see creepy uncle in the bathroom mirror.  Fat geek, but never creepy uncle.  I’m not at all certain why a smart phone should choose to do this to me – unless it has some issue with my browsing history – although why a record of searches for cheap wallplugs, green ink and deleted CD’s should turn it against me, I cannot imagine.  I always look like the happy pictures of dead men released by the Kremlin in order to demonstrate how content they were in custody.  “Zoom in on his eyes and you can see the reflection of a man with a gun.”  “That’s not a man with a gun, that’s a family-sized tub of cookie dough ice-cream and a spoon for one.”  That deranged looking photo of Rasputin had to be taken with a smart phone…

I could ask my wife to take a photo, but she would think me, with a certain degree of justification, incredibly vain.
“Why do you need a new photo for your blog?”
“So that my readers can see what I look like.”
“Why do they care what you look like?”
“Erh…”
Don’t you hate it when that happens? 

Anyway, what you have here is the latest photograph I have taken of myself and you have it simply because I do not hate it quite so much as the last one.  For some reason that I cannot fathom, I feel obliged to try to show you that I actually am a real person and most definitely nothing to write home about.  I think I might change it every month through this year, until I find something better – possibly a smiling sloth, a grinning cat, or a brightly coloured orphan fish – with which to replace me.  I have a soul that is predisposed to laughter but a face that’s predisposed to glum.  This is what old age looks like through a filter of rum.

Rum and ginger beer is the tipple of the day.  I don’t know why.  I like it and I’m not at work in the morning.  That’ll do.  Although I’m not at all sure that it is the drink of a newly redundant man.  What should that be, I wonder?  I’m not ready for hemlock.  Perhaps, in the future, I will have to accept that whisky can be blended – but I won’t have to like it.

I didn’t expect to be redundant at 62.  It wasn’t in my plan.  When I started to pay my pension, I expected to retire, a rich man, at 60.  The financial crash of 2008 destroyed that illusion.  I settled for ‘relatively comfortable at 67’, only to find myself torpedoed by unemployment five years early.  I planned to spend my retirement on holiday, now I will probably spend it on PG Tips and oven-chips.  Maybe I already look like a man who lives on tea and chips?  You will need to tell me.  I seldom drink tea and I will eat oven-chips only when all other options, including starvation, have been exhausted – do I look that way?  When you turn 62 and you sit in your office with a rum and a smart phone, and you think, ‘I know, I’ll take a new photo for the blog,’ and you point and – after several aborted attempts at artistically portraying the best of your right ear – you manage to take a snap in which the entirety of you sexagenarian visage appears, only for you to discover that you look uncomfortably like a Russian mad-monk, then some kind of independent appraisal is probably necessary.

Having established that I am not what I assumed I would be at my age, I perhaps ought to take a closer look at what I actually am.  More to the point, do I look like I’m 62?  Well, I don’t think I look like a 62 year old looked when I was twelve, but then, when I was twelve, the 62 year olds had survived a war.  I think they had earned the right to look a little bit jaded.  If they wanted a three-foot crotch on their trousers and a waistband under the chin, they had earned that right.  What have I actually done that has given me the right to look like a tangerine-haired lunatic?  I’m not sure.  Perhaps it’s just what I am.  (My wife, by the way, constantly tells me that my hair is too long.  I ask, ‘Too long for what?’ and she just rolls her eyes and disappears for a couple of hours before she reappears and finds a new way to tell me that my hair is too long.  I don’t mind.  It reminds me that I’m not going bald yet.  Vain?  Yes, alright, I’ll give her that.)  I suppose I feel like a 62 year old because I am a 62 year old – and this is how I feel.  I will try very hard to get to grips with my iPhone camera before I crown 63.  Who knows, by my next birthday, I might have an avatar that looks like a rational old man.  God knows, I might even be one…

*The observant amongst you may have noticed that it actually changed yesterday. Doesn’t that just go to show?

Published by colinmcqueen

Published

34 thoughts on “Sixty Two”

  1. Thing is Dude, the photo image is smaller than the size of a two pence piece and you’re fine in either this one or the one before. We’re online right? So who really cares what we look like? In fact I’m of the opinion that no one needs to see me to get to know the me I wish to communicate. Say I become a cloud by a meteorite crashing into the Earth and we’re all in the cloud able to communicate using ice crystals or sommat, you’d know me right? I mean even at work clients can only get to see my eyes to keep them and myself safe, but that I hope they know me by my gentle actions, soft words, consideration to try to fulfil their needs and sharing the occasional joke. 🥳

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Advice for 2021: Cut your hair Dude, your wife wants to give it a go and after all she is the most important person in your life, right? Oh and my friend (I can call you that right) hair grows back. Oh and “Happy, hilariously funny and calm contented… and all those lovely things type of Birthday”.

        Liked by 2 people

      7. What? Why “Ooh no” as it seems a lot easier. Still, you hold on to your identity yer hippy, only joking, you look fine FFS just let her trim it a little (unless she’s took out a new insurance on you). {{{giggles}}}

        Liked by 2 people

      12. You know, I get the feeling you’re reading my comments with this look on your face, 🤨 with one eyebrow lifted. Just out of interest, why have you got a clickable thingy called [Contact] that goes to an “Oops! That page can’t be found.”

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Yeah, you hang on there Colin and I’ll catch up.
    In a few years.
    Hopefully.

    Have a good day (How long does your ‘It’s OK to drink whisky because it’s a special occasion…’ excuse last?)

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Nah. Not ginger ale. Ginger beer is quite a different kettle of fish. Maybe it’s a British thing? Ginger beer is like ginger ale’s spicy punk step-brother 😀. I’ll keep on keeping on 😜

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Wish you a beautiful year ahead! My father retired seven years back at 62. He was rather worried how to deal with it at first. But he read a book about how to enjoy life after retirement. He is now the happiest old man I have met. And has driven my mother the craziest! I am not sure about redundancy but if it is the same as retirement, I would congratulate you. Now, you’ll have time to publish that book you have been sitting on for 20 years. And your garden shed will get more love from you. Enjoy life!

    Liked by 1 person

  6. And, you look great! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And never let a wife with scissors come near your neck. When husbands retire, women usually turn crazy (and murderous).

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I’ve a hunch that your wife would tell you your chances of becoming a rational old man are slim to none. As for myself, I have no business making a judgement of that kind and will keep my personal opinions where they belong. But I must say, you are certainly on to something with the whole “Rasputin’s picture was taken with a smartphone” idea.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I think that you are being excessively generous with your ‘slim’ appraisal. Look at that photo. It has all the hallmarks of a Kremlin selfie – most particularly that he’d clearly been dead for some time before he took it.

      Liked by 2 people

  8. Happy Birthday, my friend and brother from another mother. I’m still a youngster and on Feb 6 I will only be turning 61. I have a picture my daughter took quite a few years ago as my avatar. I like it and I don’t plan to change it.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. You look like a person to me and considering she says your hair is too long, your wife still looks at you as well. These are things many people can not say. You may have noticed that my picture has never hit my blog, And for that you should be grateful. For if it did, Large amounts of content regulation would be sure to follow. Happy Birthday

    Make a resolution to Laugh

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.