Funtime

It is traditional for people to list all of the things that one supposedly gains with age: wisdom, patience, humility, tolerance, but to forget all of the things you lose: strength, flexibility, dexterity, car keys, the ability to remember why you’ve just gone up the stairs, and above all, fun.  As you get older, ‘fun’ becomes an ever rarer element in your life.  You do things to ‘make a change’, to ‘challenge yourself’, to ‘pass the time’ but seldom simply because they are fun: no jumping in puddles; no having sex when there’s a reasonably high chance of being caught at it; no dancing in the rain; no using a made-up language in conversations on the bus; no roller-skating, no playing cricket with a Rounders bat and a golf ball, no trying to make a playground swing ‘go over the top’, no drinking coffee until your eyeballs vibrate…  Invariably ‘the price’ becomes too high, the ‘tutting’ of children too loud.

I believe that the government needs to institute an annual National Make a Total Tit of Yourself Day just for the over sixties.  Do it in the summer and the beaches will be full of sexagenarian skinny-dippers, or do it in the winter when the parks will be full of snowmen, sledges, snowballs, hot-aches and broken hips.  Do it any time and there will be wrinkly skin on show, cigarettes being smoked, weird cocktails being made from anything found at the back of the drinks cupboard: “Oh yes, it is one part cheap vodka, one part fourteen year-old Ouzo, one part Sanatogen and a small dash of that fluorescent green stuff we got from the Spanish monastery on our honeymoon.  You should try it: I’ve just seen the inside of my eyeballs…”

And I’m not sure why, but old people will use any excuse to take clothes off: we are the “H & E*” generation.  Naked volleyball may no longer be on the agenda, but what could possibly go wrong with naked Uno?  Exposing genitalia at inappropriate times is so much more fun when nobody in their right mind could possibly find it in any way alluring: “Why have you got no clothes on gran?”
“I’m going to have a shower.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow… possibly.”
“Ok.  And have you remembered that you are currently shopping in the Co-op?”
“Oh… There was a time when men would have died for this you know.”
“And?”
“Most of them died before they got it unfortunately… Now, where’s the Vapo Rub?”
It is the only reason that we oldies keep our houses so warm…

As joy becomes harder to find, you start to look for it a little bit harder, and you find it in different places: in non-matching clothes, in a tub of cockles on a freezing cold seashore, in beating the contestants on a TV quiz show, in eating baked beans for 365 days a year, in drinking red wine with fish fingers…  The wisdom of age simply tells you to take joy where you can find it and bugger just ‘passing the time’, there’s not enough of it left…

*Health & Efficiency (H&E) was a naturist magazine back in the day, and the nearest thing we ever got to pornography.

I just do what I want to do
All aboard for funtime…  Funtime – Iggy Pop (Bowie/Pop)

FYI – I have just completed this piece fuelled by red wine and a packet of Honey Roasted Peanuts which the packet describes as “Sweet and savoury nuggets of delight”: what’s not to love?