Being Canute

A sideways look at age, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour 3 Minutes

Whilst my grasp of technology is pretty much ok for a man of my age, my willingness to utilise it is very much less so.  I have access to millions (probably billions – I can’t be sure and I can find no incentive to check) of songs on the various streaming services, but I still choose to listen, constantly, to CD’s and I continue to add to my collection weekly.  We have various TV streaming services, but when I do watch TV, I watch the terrestrial broadcasts based on ‘what’s on’, and when I find a new series that I enjoy, I tune in at the same time each week to watch the next episode.  TV is one of the few things I never binge on.  I have been playing with computers since the days of MS-DOS, but I feel no compulsion to ‘fiddle’ these days.  As long as they continue to do what I need them to do, I leave them to it.  I am peculiarly inept at ‘computer games’, constantly going left when I should go right, up when I should go down, forever shooting myself in the foot, so I make no more than an occasional foray into Football Manager, in which I inevitably get sacked half way through my first season having overseen a player revolt and a plummet to a league position from which the only way is up.  By and large, I don’t seek solutions until I’ve got problems.

I have mentioned before – far too often for comfort I fear – the march of the new that is taking place just behind our back hedge and today, as the sun was shining, I looked out with more than my usual attention to the comings and goings in the building site which has become the backdrop to every writing session, and I grasped, quite suddenly, the stark contrast between what I would like to hang onto and what I am so patently about to lose.  My own world is shrinking and the outside world is encroaching – literally banging on my back gate – and there is nothing to be done.  People need homes and here they are.

The photograph at the top of this page is one of a glorious sunset I witnessed over the top of my laptop perhaps two years ago.  It does not do the scene justice – I am no photo-journalist – but it does perhaps illustrate the magnitude of what I previously had to look out on.  These photographs are of my little garden now when viewed from ground level – e.g. when making coffee or raiding the biscuit barrel…

…whilst these are views from my office window.

To the right you can see some of the 100+ houses that have been built to date. The rest of the 350+ are still to come…

The question is what do I do now?  Do I resist?  Do I grow my hedge and narrow my horizons down to my own three fences, or do I embrace the change that I can do nothing to halt, enjoy the spectacle and, when the time comes, broaden my outlook and become part of the new before it has the opportunity to consume me?  For years we have lived with a picture postcard view of England’s green and pleasant, but also the worry of what they might do with it.  We no longer have that worry.  We have certainty, and the reality – almost certainly – will be nothing like as dire as the fear of what might have been.

Mortality has pressed a little heavier on me this year – anyone of a similar age will understand this – the world, and more importantly the people within it, are changing.  It is an ongoing process that could, and probably should, never be turned back.  I am on the beach.  I can be Canute or I can don a sunhat and paddle.  Here’s to getting my feet wet…

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Published by colinmcqueen

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19 thoughts on “Being Canute”

  1. For so many years I resisted, oh so many things but I have found life so much easier having given all that up. Change has happened at such devastating speed in our lifetime. I tried galloping to keep up but found I could not, so I settle for muddling along. No one expects more of me anyway. Your garden is so pretty, such a lovely piece of England. I know only too well how you feel about the homes that are going up. But I imagine you will be glad at least when the noise and chaos is gone.

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  2. You call that a garden. We call it ‘the yard’
    The garden is where you grow veggies.
    Flower beds are where you grow flowers.
    Amazing how the same things have different names around the world.

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  3. The name Canute rang a bell but I couldn’t remember. I looked it up a long time ago.
    I think you can wear a sunhat and have a paddle AND get your feet wet all at the same time. Like having your cake and eating it too.

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  4. Hmm … sounds as if you might have run out of whiskey. Change is a pain but it excites other people so probably has to happen. Whiskey stays more or less the same, provided you buy a good one …

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  5. The problem is things do change. I look at our neighbourhood being ‘redeveloped’ and stop and sigh as the Kwik-ee-Bild two-three storyed townhouses soar up in the blink of a greedy developers eye, leaving their surrounding neighbours to live in a house of Dark Shadows. Some call it progress, and we can rail against it but, as Canute and Arthur Dent found out, you cant stop it. It will roll right over you.
    Anyway, hope that’s cheered your day up.

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  6. Well, I suppose all you can hang on to is that your life isn’t that different, it’s just the views are. You’ll just have to look forward to all the young families you can horrify, by jogging up through their shiny new estates in your dilapidated running gear.

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  7. Wow… talk about right on your back doorstep. Your gardens are lovely but it looks like your peace and quiet is coming to an end. I’m afraid no one can answer your question but you. Your oasis will stand, but that’s a whole lot of noisy neighbors.
    🥴

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