Old and Young !
December 14, 2009 by Jason Shaw
long the road to the past!
Oh my goodness me, what a day it was last Saturday, first I had to get up early, well early for me that is, especially on a day off. And, Best Gay Blog readers, I’m not one for early mornings, really, like most bloggers, I like a layin!
Then, as I wanted more slumber, I had to leave without having a tasty brekkie, just a mouthful of hot coffee that scalded my tongue was all I was able to gulp before my older brother rushed me to the train station!
We headed up the road of iron rails to my old home town in the Surrey countryside. My brother kept me entertained along the way, similar sense of humour, which helps no end, we laugh as the same things, are often silly and perhaps to outsiders childish, but to us, we are the kings of comedy! Legends in our own, errm minds!
Once up in the town we used to call out own, the town of our youth, we took a look around. It was, I have to say once a town center that seemed so big, so – at times scary, hidden nooks, crannies, and stores. But, all the places that used to seem so vast, so big, so positively huge, now all are rather small, as if the whole place had been thrown in the wash at high temperature’s and come out four sizes too small.
All the places I used to hang with my friends were either gone, modernised or appeared to be a third of the size they used to be! Which obviously can’t be the case, for buildings don’t just shrink, well not like that anyway, it’s not possible. Yet the arcade that was once an age to walk through is tiny and short, the chippy that once was cavernous looks like it only has three or four tables, the pub on the corner, where I drunk myself silly on more than a few occasions seems no bigger than the lounge back home, the world as I knew it had, changed!
Perhaps, just maybe it’s a sign of growing up, or maturing, but going back to the old town, back to my roots almost, I felt as if I shouldn’t have been there, as if it was a visitor going to a place I’d only seen old photos of. Yes, my brother was with me, but really, we never used to hang out together when we were younger, so treading through the streets of the old home town felt a little odd anyway.
There were of course many changes, a Wilkinson’s where the Woolworth’s used to be where we’d nick pick n mix candy or Lego from. I remember when it used to have a food counter all those years ago, where on a father would get his pound of streaky bacon, mushrooms, black pudding and tomatoes for his Sunday fry up breakfast, the only meal he ever used to cook.
In my ears I could hear echo’s of voices of the past, of school friends, telling tales, making jokes, when we used to run through town school bag in hand. Our shouts and screams, our fun, nothing but an imaginary sound in a middle aged man’s ears.
Don’t forget, in England 90% of children walk to and from school, yet it really is that close, walking from one end of town to the other, would take me, now as an adult less than half one hour, as a kid, much longer, for legs were shorted and there were far more things to look at and investigate along the way!
There were a few of the old shops, that I used to know, that used to serve me well back when my whole universe was contained in that little Surrey town. How, things change, how our boarders and boundaries are as a small person, inhabiting a land of giants, our garden was like a town in miniature, our street a little country. The swings in the park were therefore pretty much overseas to us, such was the distance to our tender young minds. To travel beyond a five mile radius of the town centre was more than an adventure and delight, it was almost an exhibition into the wilderness.
Yet, walking through the town center, I was struck, just how built up yet utterly small it all seemed. The tall tower block that used to gnarl down onto the town like a brutish concrete ogre, looked rather small, old and tired. The massive sports ground that once held at least two full days worth of exploring and entertainment can now be crossed in under two minutes. From one end of the town centre to the other, takes less that five earth minutes, but I remember my little legs getting tired before we reached Jennings the toy shop, half the distance. Although, I’m not sure that’s actually true, or whether I can only recall that because I’ve been told on numerous occasions, that’s what used to happen!
After we’d got some flowers, waited around for a little while, we got a taxi to the location of the birthday party and the entire reason for our up country adventure. The way the ‘non local’ taxi driver took up was an all together different way than I was expecting, but was a welcome diversion away from normal as it transversed the hill I used to climb whilst on cross country runs as a school boy! How vast the distance seemed then, but now well, it was a wonder how or rather why it used to take so long to complete, but perhaps that was more to do with the smokes we used to sneak down one of the tracks when no-one could see!
Beyond what was once fields, open countryside of my memories now stands a housing estate, a collection of modern, brightly colored boxes, with postage stamp gardens, single driveways and completely indistinguishable from it’s neighbors, be they next to it, along the same road or in different streets, in different towns, in different counties. I do feel we are becoming more unified, more unimposing, nonstriking and unremarkable in our home building styles and techniques. After all a Barratt’s home in Winchester looks, feels and is the same as a Barratt’s home in Dorchester and Wokingham. But, I guess that’s just the way of the world, the evolution of life, we all go to school, want and strive to be different and then leave school, looking for something different, something new, rebel against the old yet ultimately we then strive for all the same things, the nice house, the nice car, settle down with a partner, a stable job and live a rather unremarkable, unadventurous life, so it’s no surprise that our dwelling boxes are starting to all look the same!
We pulled up outside the rather plush, more private hospital looking nursing home, otherwise known as old folks home, gods waiting room, coffin dodgers dwellings, heavens hanger, or old wrinklies room. There was a sense of dread washing over me, I’m not good with old people, my grandmother, so I’m told has memory problems, so perhaps she wouldn’t recognize me or any of the other folk come to see her from all over the country, on this her special day. It was an emotional wrench for anyone, no matter what age they are.
Plus, there is something odd about an old peoples residence, there is something akin to an unspoken understanding that this is the final waiting area before death. It’s the place you either go or are put when you’ve got to old to be useful or wanted. When the time has come for you to meet your maker, when living in your own home is no longer an option, so they shove you in a home and that’s where you wait, watched TV, wait, eat, wait, watch TV and basically vegetate until death strikes! The people in the home know it, the people that work there know it, the visitors know it, everyone knows it, but no-one ever says such a thing about it.
The peach and pastel colours were a little surprise as we got buzzed in the secure doors to prevent the less memory able’d among the folk of old to wonder outside and lose themselves under the wheels of a passing semi !
My nose had expected a hatred acidic aroma of ammonia to bombard the sinuses of all the pee’d pants and wet chairs, but just tones of warmness and delicate hints of flowers filled the air, and I thought my idea of hell on earth to which old people come to live out their last days, was so far removed from reality that I sighed with relief heavily.
There were a group of people in the dining lounge, some I sort of recognised and some I so didn’t. It was so strange, so odd and so bizarre, like stepping into an unpublished, unseen scene from a movie that was my past life. My parents were there in the middle of it all, it was a reunion scene in this movie, surrounded by people that I really should have known, but didn’t. It was so very odd, my eyes rapidly flashed from one face to another, in the vain hope of even a hint of recognition. Mostly I didn’t, well except perhaps my uncle Chris and his wife Frayer. Now uncle Chris was always my favorite uncle when I was small, not that we’re a close family, we hardly ever saw them, I always used to think it was because it was a big family, there wasn’t enough time. But uncle Chris, I remember when he used to work for the fire service, once took me all round the local fire station, the training centre and all round the appliances – which for a 12 year old is something very special and something they can hold on to – I mean, I still remember it, even now, this day and it’s been a good few years.
Uncle Chris’ wife as I said was there, beside her hubby, and even tho I’m a 40 year old guy, my shiver went up and down my spine, for I can remember her shouting at me, sometime around my grandfathers funeral, not sure what for, but at the time I was a bit scared. I’d always been a bit frightened by here and somehow, I guess I always will be. Perhaps, it’s one of those things that don’t change, no matter how old you get? You always hold your first memory of a family member close at hand, so every time you meet them, you remember in your shock and inner pain when you first met them and pee’d your pants!
Mind you, they’ve always looked down their noses at us, they’ve always adopted a superior attitude toward our side of the family, when I was young I didn’t notice it too much, just overheard conversations, as was my way back then. The thing’s I heard when the grown up’s were talking and thought I was too young to understand or was just playing with my toys. But now, looking at it with an adult mind, an adults knowledge that humans, especially in families, play mind games, have hidden agenda’s and often dislike and distrust each other, it’s easy for me to see the contempt my auntie has for us, the dark side of the family. We always were thought of as the poor relations, in some ways it was true, in other ways far from it. I have considered this since that visit, but to be honest, I don’t mind. They are the ones that missed out so much on not knowing me and my brothers and sisters that well over the years. Can that change, can it?
My grandmother, who was slowly walked in, looked in very fine form, I was so impressed, OK, so her sight is pretty bad, as is her hearing, but, with the aid of a walking frame she’s quite fast at walking, going faster than those escorting her! She did the rounds, we all gave her a kiss and said who we were, some were remembered by her, and some perhaps not, well there was rather a lot of folk in the room and she is rather old, after all, which was the reason various of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren had come all the way to this place to give her a birthday treat, both ends of a century.
I remember times alone with my grandmother, or nanna as she preferred to be called, when I was young, perhaps ten or eleven. She was a fairly strict lady, not overly so, but you instantly knew where you stood with her, or more to the point as a child what you could get away with. During summer holiday I was allowed to go and live with them for a week or two, which, was for me such a thrill and indeed a luxury. I loved it, yes I had to get up at an early time, watched old peoples TV choices, but that didn’t matter, it was nice to spend time with them. Yes, I used to get told off for touching grandads brasses and leaving my sticky child sized finger prints on them, but always with tenderness. Such fond memories, playing mini golf in the back garden, watching the tortoise they’d had for years slowly scuttle round the back, simple pleasures, yes. Plus there was plenty of time to read books and that sort of thing because this was a simpler time, a time before quite so much electrical entertainment. The Internet wasn’t around in those days, nor were games consoles, yes there were computers, but they were few and far between and kinda looked a bit freaky and programmes came on cassette tape and made such a horrid squeaky squealy noise that I avoided like a dose of crabs.
Do you remember cassette tape, those things that came after 8track and before CD’s, the things that boomboxes were invented for? No, perhaps it’s just me!
It was as weekly tradition to go, after breakfast on our cycles over to nanna’s, which at the time was a fair old way for little legs. The distance is only about 4 or 5 miles, which for us in sleepy little England is a fair old way. Don’t forget my American chums, England is a tad tiny, you can fit it all in Illinois! Yes really, OK, with Scotland added on, it’s a bit bigger, but not all that much!
Anyway, on Sundays we’d spend the morning with them, my grandparents, playing games, chatting and then we’d cycle back. I can remember it as clear as if it were my legs on peddles yesterday. They were days when I was happy, day’s when life was a pleasure with no worry, no stress, not difficulty. They were times when I could hear about my grandfather reminisce about fighting the fires in London during the blitz during World War II. Those were times when I could listen to my grandmother tell me unbelievable stories of my fathers childhood, unbelievable as it was to me at that age that my father was ever a child himself or fun. I so wish I had paid more attention, listened more, learned more from them both when the chance was there, when time was abundant, children don’t, do they!
I watched her, my nanna, the other weekend, all these years later, I’ve grown from a child, to an adolescent, a nasty horrid teenager that thought he knew everything, yet knew very little, and finally into a man. She has just grown older, slower, lonely a tad frail but not as much as I was expecting, my life has faced vast changes, her life changes of a different kind. I’m a vastly different person from the one I was back then, she one the other hand is pretty much the same. Hair a little thinner, eyes a little weaker, bones a little more fragile, but pretty much the same, same smile, same twinkly eyes, same voice, same everything, except perhaps one of the most vital things – memory. Sometimes it’s there, and sometimes it’s not!
I chuckled inwardly as someone, a relative of some distant sort suggested a photo outside in the cold courtyard ‘That ain’t gonna happen’ I said to myself, yet moments later, lead by the guest of honour herself, the assembled throng was outside, posing for a few different photos with different people, it was such a delight yet I also had a tinge in my stomach as if I were staring in the face of my own increasing age and inevitable immortality.
Both my blood uncles were there, my father the middle child of the three and seeing the three together standing in a row, I was a sight that amused and alarmed at the same time, the younger, Chris, retaining his looks, and most like his father, my grandfather in his mannerisms and behaviour, my father whom the least said the better, then Donald, a long thin stick man, who always put the fear of god in me as a child, yet I was so young, he was so tall and high. They’ve all been officers in the forces, so they all have that military stance, you know, straight back, firm arms and they all have that air of excess discipline and of superiority. Oh yes, the forces discipline I remember from my youth, I was the only boy in school who know how to stand to attention in the corner, do hospital corners when making the bed and how to march, not bad for a 9 year old.
I looked at their faces, the family resemblance carrying on through the gene’s and noticed the aging process that I will, or rather am going through, right in front of my very eyes. None have aged exceptionally well, it’s kinda scary about that I have to look forward too. Indeed my brother, the middle one of the three boys had already commented that with this shaggy bread I’m sporting at the moment, I’m already looking like father did at this age, which has strengthened my resolve to shave as soon as possible.
Why do we try to be so different from out parents, we fight so hard to have our individuality, strive to make our own lives to be different from them, far removed from them, never making the same mistakes as our life giving parent. But ultimately, we will, inevitably end up exactly like them and there isn’t a blinding thing we can do about it.
Back, to the party the other day, there was the cousin I once had dirty thoughts about, back when he was a soldier in his scarlet, or later in his fireman’s uniform, looking shorter and more worldly worn than the young fighter of his former self. He still interested me, still captivated me with his tales of army life and the jolly japes he got up to, but attractive he sadly wasn’t. I mean when he was younger, in his uniform he was hot totty to say the very least, and I’m oddly ashamed to admit, the subject of many a jerk off fantasy! Oh yes, but hey I was younger then and he was a guy in uniform, fit, muscley, exciting and I was, well just a horny teenager eager to put his dick in any hole he could!
His sister, I knew better, and before you ask, I never had any fantasy sexual or otherwise about her, but anyway we’d worked in the same building a while ago, our faces meeting across a glass partition, so we’d wave toward each other and bond we did slightly. We had a giggle and shared a glass of wine, which given this was a party, albeit in in the afternoon was a blessing and a requirement. I giggled with her and let her know, if there was any doubt in the family about the sexuality, doubt there would be no more off ! Oh how I do like there to be as gasp and a question mark in the air after I leave a room or a party. As dear old Oscar once said, “There is one thing worse that being talked about – NOT being talked about!” I’m sure they talked about me on the way home!
Subsequent days have left me in awe of my grandmothers age, after all, she’s lived through a lot, a whole lot, the world has changed beyond all recognition, before her very eyes. For example, she was born the same year as actor Errol Flynn and Carmen Miranda, the year Louis Bleriot was the first person to fly an aircraft over the English Channel (Or any wide stretch of water for that matter).
When she was just a year old, George V is the new King of England and Portugal becomes a republic and Henry Ford sells his 1,000th car. It was in her second year of life that the Mona Lisa was stolen from The Louvre in Paris and Amundsen’s expedition reached the South Pole. Skipping ahead, she was just 5 years when the First World War started, she’d be 9 before it finished, she’s seen 3 kings and 1 queen on the throne, the Second World War and countless other smaller, still deadly wars and conflicts have taken place in her lifespan so far. Whitnesed the birth of such milestones in history as the invention of jet aircraft, television, penicillin, electric light bulbs, the internet and sliced bread. Film’s came slowly, complete with a pianist to play a score,that over years morphed into tellevison which then in turn gave way to video, to DVD to Tivo.
So much has changed over the course of her life, it’s difficult to write about, or even comprehend. Countries such as India, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong have all gained their independence from the once great British Empire. When she was a teenage girl, you saw a motorcar once or twice a week, if you were lucky. Seen food rationing come and go and come again and go again during two world wars. She’s lived through one great depression and as a woman been able to cast a vote in the election for the first first time 1928. There have been 18 Prime Ministers of the UK since her birth, although three of them have had the job more than once at different times. She’s seen the very first powered aircraft get off the ground and develop into going to the moon and beyond.
Without a doubt, she’s lived through one of the most exciting periods of development in history, the world has changed far more than it ever has before. Now, she’s had a telegram from Her Maj The Queen to congratulate and celebrate a century of life, and you know what? She maybe 100 but she still likes a slice of cake and a glass of wine! My grandmother, is 100, a life well lived, a life full of adventure, she is probably one of the most truly remarkable people I’ve ever known or am likely to know. Her long life, has born thoughts of my own mortality, my own life, and has come as perhaps a timely reminder, that life, is as they say for living. I want to get to my old age and regret the things I have done, and not the things I haven’t.
Only we can make that happen, you and me. What is your destiny ?
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