To baldly go: ageing, the final frontier with some help from Springsteen

THEY used to say that by a certain age a man or a woman has the face they deserve. In 2018, it is possibly more a case that we have the face we can afford.

It is my 51st birthday next week and a well-meaning friend offered to get me a present of a Botox treatment in a fancy clinic.

It was an uncomfortable realisation: that I must look either very old or very worn — or both — if a friend is offering me Botox as a birthday prezzie.

In any event, I politely declined the offer. I’ll keep the face I have for the time being. I don’t want to look like I’ve been piloting a subsonic jet or even a Ryanair plane without a windshield for the last 10 years of my life, thank you very much.

Even though, on reflection, sometimes I achieve that dismaying look without the help of Botox.

Last week, for example. I caught a glimpse of the back of my head in the mirror of a hotel lift. I looked like Peig with a bald patch, or worse like a ginger version of Mr Snagsby in Bleak House.

“He [Mr Snagsby] is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back,” wrote Charles Dickens. “He tends to meekness and obesity.”

Whatever about timidness, meekness and obesity, my man boobs have definitely made an unwelcome return (says he, fat-shaming himself ), because my dodgy knee has kept me out of the gym all summer (says he, making excuses for his moobs and spare tyre around the waist) and the reality of my hair is a depressing and troubling one. (Depressing and troubling unless I go the Donald Trump route and take to wearing the stolen hair of a dead animal on my head. Which would, in fact, be even more depressing and troubling.)

Almost as troubling as the receding hairline is the colour: it is not even red or red-ish any more; it is a weird shade of greying blond.

In truth, the odd grey colour — or even the moobs — I can deal with, but the thinning hair might be a bit hard to take. I have got my head around the ageing bit and the fact that, at 51, I do not feel immortal like I did when I was 21. Resistance is futile and all that, but looking like a character in Bleak House is not how I saw myself at 51.

The universe has finally caught up with my hair.

My late father used to joke that he could get me an estimate for a decent haircut from the local barber in Churchtown. My dad wore being bald very well. He had the face for it.

Not me. However, I am trying to resign myself to my follicular fate.

Still, as Larry David pointed out, “anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man — there’s your diamond in the rough”.

Maybe the curse of imminent baldness is my cosmic comeuppance for the stupid comments I made about The Edge’s own difficulties in that department in 1992 in the Sunday Independent. The Edge is a very fine musician and a very fine man.

Indeed for The Whoseday Book in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation in 1991, The Edge appeared to absolve me of all sin regarding my idiotic comments about him, his hair and his band. Next to contributions from, among others, Enya, Neil Jordan, Marian Keyes, Seamus Heaney, Charlie Haughey, Anthony Cronin, Brian Friel, Noel Pearson and Richard Harris, the great U2 guitarist mused poetically on the coming millennium. “Learn French. Pay your TV licence. Talk to the neighbours. Read some Shakespeare. Cut your toenails. Stop buying shoes you never wear. Go to Vietnam. Teach the Orangemen how to jog. Get down on your knees. Think again.”

Then: “Forgive Barry Egan.”

That’s all well and good, but have I forgiven myself ?

There are, of course, so many great, great, great things about getting old. Being a dad is the most important one for me. You can add to that — I hope — being a nicer, kinder, sweeter, more emotionally intelligent, more tolerant, more loving man, a less grouchy human being.

I love my life and all the people in it. I love my work, too. The amazing people — both famous and not so famous — who I get to meet week in, week out for the Sunday Independent, is a massive privilege for me. I appreciate the great friendships I have forged in my job in the 30 years I have been at the Sindo. I also appreciate how lucky I have been with my health and how blessed I am to know the people who came into my life along the way — great people like Patrick Rocca, Conor Owens, and Dolores O’Riordan — but went away before their time. Joanne Creegan, a beautiful girl from my neighbourhood in Churchtown, was tragically killed in one of the Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.

So I appreciate every moment of my life, even the bad days when the weather is atrocious and the Luas is packed. I think I have embraced becoming not so much old but no longer young perhaps. It no longer scares the daylights out of me. As Bruce Springsteen, who understands more about life than most people will ever know, said recently: “You can’t be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you’re gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.”

Because tramps like us, Bruce, baby, we were born to run.