Decked by Dolly!

This afternoon I had a latte from Costa and I’m now on a caffeine high. 🤪 It’s funny isn’t it how your taste buds change as you age? For all of my life I have hated the taste of coffee, but I always adored the smell of it. My choice of hot beverage was tea [it doesn’t even have to be hot, I can drink it stone cold] but whenever my wife Angela has a mug of strong coffee I usually ask her if I could inhale the aroma, but always demur whenever she offers me a sip.

Three weeks ago we [that is me, Angela, our two children, and Angela’s mum [aka my mother out-law, aka our holiday babysitter] were on a wonderful cruise ship in the north sea, exploring the coast of Norway. The holiday was fantastic but it was exhausting and I was so tired my 6-year-old son beat me for the first time at chess!

I’d been teaching him for the last 12 months. It was just before we went in for dinner [it’s obligatory on a cruise ship that passengers eat at least 13 meals in 24 hours]. I’d taught Oliver various clever moves and tricks and he caught my queen with a sneaky bishop hiding behind his rook. In my defense, I had closed my eyes and started to snore. He was naturally ecstatic and loudly announced to everyone he met on the way to the restaurant about his victory.

Some three hours later, still smarting at the shame of this defeat, I decided to try a coffee; I really, really needed a caffeine fix! I asked Angela what was the mildest coffee available, so she ordered a milky latte. For the first time in the sixty years of my life, I drank a whole cup of coffee. I put in lots of sweetener (being diabetic sugar is a no-no) to mask the taste. Within a few minutes, I was buzzing, feeling a bit lightheaded, but revitalized.

My urologist had recommended that I should avoid caffeine, so for the last year or so I’ve been drinking my tea decaffeinated. But that night I reasoned that despite avoiding caffeine I still had to go to the loo frequently in the daytime and at least twice during the night, disturbing my sleep, so what the hell? [you really don’t want to read about my current medical issues, which would take weeks to write and at least a full day to read].

But today is only the third full cup of coffee I’ve ever had and I now absolutely adore the taste, so I can well understand how addictive it could be for some. In fact, Angela apparently can’t function in the mornings without a steaming mug of strong Kenco.

As I’ve aged I have also found that I like green beans, sprouts and a variety of other vegetables, which I used to avoid — broccoli is still disgusting to me though. I used to hate mushrooms too — ‘magic’ or otherwise — but I love them now. [I’ve still not tried the magic ones — many years ago my friends used to cook them up and just looking at the thick grey goo would make me heave. I preferred my trips packaged as tiny paper dots].

Anyway, this isn’t about my discerning food tastes or otherwise, I wanted to write about being old. In short, it is my long-held considered opinion that there is NOTHING good about being old. For the bulk of my life, I suppose I’ve suffered from a streak of gerontophobia. Since it is an officially recognized condition and therefore an ailment, you can’t judge me, so there!

Of course, my definition of ‘old’ changed somewhat as I aged, the goalposts shifting consistently — for example, people in their 40s were ancient when I was a teen. The Overton window shifted somewhat when I was 22 and I had a passionate affair with a 40-year-old woman (she was actually the Officer In Charge of a hostel I was temporarily living in when I left my maternal home) who apparently felt completely unloved by her husband [I’ll be writing about this exciting/bizarre time in a more serious biographical post quite soon — watch this space].

Old people mostly depressed me. Particularly, when in my first job as a welfare rights officer with Social Services, I would have to visit geriatric nursing homes. Watching these poor wrinkly folk sitting in their high-backed chairs, vegetating in front of the communal TV with the volume turned off, was a vision of horror to me. On reflection maybe I was fearful that this was quite likely to be my eventual destiny.

I found a lot of old people to be rude and surly, whilst young people always got a bad rap. I firmly believed that it was largely a myth that age equalled wisdom.

There were very few ancient people I admired. The exceptions being luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, the 14th Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa [although she somewhat fell off my assigned pedestal when I read Christopher Hitchens’ The Missionary Position], Bob Dylan, Bette Davis, Noam Chomsky, Arthur Scargill and of course my Uncle Johnny.

Over the years I would get more depressed whenever I filled in forms and I had to declare my age — I would scroll lower and lower to find my year of birth (1961). Of course, I never considered myself old and still don’t really.

Yes, I had realized that my hairline was receding and my dark hair was getting lighter and thinner— but even now I look in the mirror and just see a handsome silver fox rather than a grey aging buzzard. Mentally I am young and besides, many people can’t believe it when I tell them my age [I’ll be 61 in November].

I first felt ‘old’ when I went to see a Steve Harley gig about 6 years ago. For younger readers, Harley was the lead singer of a 1970s British ‘glam rock’ band called Cockney Rebel. I dragged my nephew along with me [he had never heard of the guy, but he actually enjoyed his music].

In the 3rd or 4th song, I noticed, disturbingly, grey-haired women wearing twin sets and sensible shoes, dancing in the aisles. “What are those old people doing here?” I shouted to my nephew. “They are your age!” he shouted back. This truthful realization shocked me to the core I can tell you.

For various reasons, I experienced many things quite late in life. For example, I didn’t attend university until my mid-30s — mostly due to the fact that they were mostly inaccessible to disabled students before then. I defined myself as an ‘immature mature student’. But I considered my much younger fellow students to be my peers and I settled into student life really easily. I had just as much energy to party as they did.

I didn’t become a father until I was 49. “I can’t believe I’m a dad!” will probably be engraved on my tombstone, as that was a regular thing I often declared for about six months until the shock wore off. People say things like “I bet it keeps you young having two children” and I just think ‘nope, I feel bloody ancient!’

My darling wife is some sixteen years younger than me. I used to brag about it and try and wedge it into conversation as much as possible. Although we love each other dearly, big age gaps can have their downsides.

Our music tastes differ widely and she still likes late nights, whilst I’m quite happy to go to bed at 10 pm [to sleep!] these days. I certainly don’t have the same energy that I used to.

When I first started to collect my daughter from school other parents would say things like “listen to your grandad!” when I was trying to get her attention. This was an understandable error as many of my peers, including those within the Thalidomide ‘tribe’ are indeed grandparents and a few are now great grandparents.

Before we set sail on that cruise ship we booked into a hotel in Southampton for one night before departure. At the check-in desk, my wife was asked by the young woman checking us in “Will your father be staying in your room?”.

Angela is now used to these sorts of questions and she replied gayly “Kevin is my husband”.

The poor girl blushed and looked as if she wanted the ground to swallow her up. It didn’t help that her manager, a larger older woman, was standing behind her with arms folded, looking on. “I am so sorry madam” she spluttered, looking down.

To lighten the mood I shouted, “I’m certainly old enough to be her dad!”.

My mother-out-law Margaret [Nanna to our children] is a lovely lady. She was really helpful as our childminder on the cruise and she utterly adores her grandchildren. Marg is from South Wales and lives with her husband John near Newport. John [Bampi to our children] is a retired Pentecostal Pastor [it says Reverend on his driving license].

On our cruise, there was a whole variety of entertainment on offer. One evening Angela had booked a session in one of the hot tubs with the children. She suggested I go to see the Dolly Parton show with her mother.

“Ooh! Dolly Parton is on this ship?”. Margaret says Ooh! a lot.
“No Marg, it is a tribute act” I informed her. I really didn’t want to go as I can’t stand country music and I’m not at all familiar with Dolly’s oeuvre. But Angela deserved a break and Margaret deserved a treat.

‘Miss Parton’ was performing on a small stage at the end of the indoor family pool, with the audience arranged along both sides of it in lounge chairs. Me and Margaret sat on the starboard side of the pool at the opposite end of the stage. Margaret was thoroughly enjoying the show. The singer performed well enough [as far as I could tell by the enthusiastic reaction of most of the audience].

“She’s not moving very much is she?” Margaret noted. “No, but I think she’s trying to keep her wig on” I replied. Margaret chuckled. Dolly had a huge curly blonde wig, sitting underneath a white stetson hat.

She was dressed as a cowgirl in a white jacket with leather sleeve tassels, a white skirt, and matching boots. She certainly looked the part. Between songs, she spoke in a Texan-sounding drawl which was very high-pitched and somewhat got on my nerves. I suspected she wasn’t really American.

I figured her breast was fake too —as her well-padded bust seemed unfeasibly large for such a small frame.

After the third song, she screeched “Is anybody here in love tonight?”. Getting a tame response, she shouted even more shrilly “Is anybody in luurve!?”. Undeterred she pointed toward us and declared “I’m dedicating this song to that lovely couple there!”

Margaret looked to her left where no one sat and then over my head and said anxiously “who is she pointing at?”.

“I think it’s us!” I replied behind a rictus smile.

“Ooh, never!” she chuckled.

I could feel a hundred pairs of eyes staring at us. I fixed my gaze on the pool, idly thinking about jumping in. Or better still hoping the singer would totter a few steps forward and her oversize boobs drag her in with a great splash.

After what seemed like an age the song had finished. But Dolly wasn’t done yet. “C’mon now, give it up for that lovely couple in lurrve!” she led the clapping as the audience obediently applauded.

“Ooh!” laughed Margaret again.

Angela thought the whole thing was hilarious when I moaned to her after the kids were put to bed. “Well you are closer to my mum’s age than mine darling,” she said giving me a comforting hug.

If we go on a cruise next year her father is coming with us!

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