The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Just Williams
Simon faces up to the ageing process
I HADN’T REALLY EXPECTED to be in my 70s so soon; like taxis in the rain, the birthdays go whizzing by. Luckily, I’m forever young on Sky Gold – and in Ambridge I can pass for man of 60. But in the real world, here I am with a bus pass and a replacement hip like everyone else. (I was born two months early, apparently – wrecking everyone’s Ascot week. Sorry, Mum.)
A well-wisher texts me that Brad Pitt is older than Nigel Farage – is that supposed to be a comfort? I surely don’t look as old as other 72-year-olds – school friends especially seem to have crumbled horribly. ‘You haven’t aged a bit,’ we tell each other, before comparing notes on pensions and prostates. ‘How often are you up in the night these days?’
I start most days feeling old, muddled and stiff – my dreams are getting weirder. But once I’ve had a stretch and a gallon of coffee I’m young again, and by lunchtime I’m back in my prime, boring the pants off people with memories of 10-bob notes and The Goon Show. In the mirror, I try to avoid looking myself in the eye – I’m six years older than my father ever was, so I count my lucky stars.
My children and grandchildren are always there to stop me getting cocky, flagging up each new deficiency. ‘Show Grampi which button to press for Netflix, darling.’ One granddaughter saw me in an old movie and asked, ‘Wow, what’s that black hair you’re wearing?’
One new pleasure is finding things I didn’t know I’d lost. Packaging is my latest bête noire: a new toothbrush can take 20 minutes to unwrap, and yesterday a heat-sealed lump of Edam had to be hacked open with a screwdriver. (Useful tips from onlookers included, ‘Swearing doesn’t help, Simon.’) But there’s really no point in being patient at my age, I haven’t got all day.
As a child I reckoned old people were pretty disgusting and I now realise how right I was. Their sell-by dates were a thing of the past. You only had to look at their bathroom shelves to know that they had some murky secrets. The invitation to, ‘Come and give me a kiss,’ came at a price. First you were clasped to the midriff, then kissed on both cheeks, a multi-pronged pong: lavender, TCP, onions, tobacco, gin, threein-one oil and a whiff of spaniel. I’d hold my breath, but by the time it got to the hair-ruffle and the ‘Goodness me, you’ve grown!’ I’d be faint for lack of air.
One thing not to do on your birthday is browse through your address book – all those friends who’ve gone on ahead, the ones you can’t delete. Blow them a kiss and rock on.