Tuesday 21 May 2024

Seventy


Apparently it’s a milestone. Or should that be a millstone? I can’t remember which because I’m seventy so my brain doesn’t work. My brain didn’t work before, but then it was down to crazy living. Now it’s down to living long enough to be crazy. It’s expected. 

Soon I’ll be pissing in my trousers and there’ll have a gentle word with me about my driving, and I’ll give the car away to a distant neice and catch the bus instead, and sometimes a kindly neighbour might give me a lift, and I’ll repay their kindness by ripping the display out of the dashboard as I haul myself out of their car thinking the display is a grab handle - because everything’s a grab handle when you get to this age, or that age.

Hell - I remember my mother grabbing hold of passers-by, floral displays, broom handles, anything to stop the FALL, steadying herself against the back of a stationary taxi which drove off and left her sprawled and concussed in the middle of Shoreham High Street, whizzed off in ambulances, and eventually losing her mind in a corner of the geriatric ward of some far-flung hospital.


Oh, I’ll handle it with aplomb:

‘Don’t worry about that’ I’ll say, indicating the passenger seat, ‘that’ll soon dry off.’

And off I’ll go to cause mayhem in the post office, or the supermarket.


Millstone or milestone…either way it’s a bloody nuisance. This wasn’t in the plan, The Grand Masterplan Of My Life which I’ve never got around to planning because I was too busy putting one foot in front of the other.


One

Foot

In front of the other

One

Foot

Another foot

In front of the other foot

Feet, inches, miles, minutes, days, hours, milestones, months and years. 

And finally this fucking millstone: 


Seventy.


It was supposed to be glorious. It was supposed to reach a crescendo, but this is the way the life ends: not with a resounding chord, but with a whimper.

They say seventy is the new forty-seven or some such nonsense. And it is nonsense because I remember being forty-seven and this is nothing like that. I was a boy, I had my life in front of me with plenty of time to fritter my life away doing stupid things, and doing nothing, and not getting around to things, and pontificating, and putting things on hold, and thinking about things rather than doing them, because I had all my silly life stretching out in front of me like an endless school summer holiday.

I know how all this ends. I lay on a gurney with a team of doctors and nurses working around me, saving my life. It wasn’t scary but it was definitely final. The will to live is what makes dying scary. Once that falls away i think it’s very easy.

I’ve woken up in the middle of the night stricken with some imagined cancer (who hasn’t?) and felt, not fear, but fury, because I’ve got shit to do and I’m not finished, and I still haven’t found out everything there is to know. It’s no good denying it, and resistance is useless. This is a finite thing and the end is coming into view. I’m not giving up, but there’s a definite slowing down. I’m not Mick Jagger and I certainly don’t want to be Mick Jagger. I’m seventy, I’m no spring chicken, and if I look in a mirror and see a fifty year old staring back at me I’m smart enough to know that I’m deluding myself.



Here's a list of tour dates:

May

30 SUTTON, SURREY - the Sound Lounge TICKETS


June

01 NORTH SHIELDS -Engine Room TICKETS

o6 BIRMINGHAM - Rock n Roll Brewhouse TICKETS

09 COVENTRY - Just Dropped In TICKETS

20 LONDON, WALTHAMSTOW - Rock n Roll Book Club TICKETS

11 comments:

  1. You didn't have Amy at 47, take the positives! I remember us both talking about being newly married (again) as a great positive, they're both still with us, which is good!
    The new version of your book arrives tomorrow, I'm hoping to enjoy the new bits! When are you coming down west again? Happy 70th by the way!

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    1. There aren't really any new bits I'm afraid, just a bit of proof-reading and polishing, some lyrics, and a foreword written by me last January!
      We've both been lucky in love!

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    2. Not true about new bits! The foreword - see I'm one the people who DO read it - was a perfect precis of the the time elapsed since the book ended. Enjoying the book for the third or fourth time. Keep coming back to Corona. My dad - who had come off of the factory floor - was 'Progress Chaser' at Websters in Waltham Cross. They made bottle-washing machines...I wonder....

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  2. You are an excellent writer. And I love your memoir.

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  3. You have summed up life exactly. I'm a mere spring chicken at 58 but sometimes it does feel like a millstone around my neck trying to reach the next milestone.
    I say to myself, I've got 12 good years left then it's down hill from there.
    Then I see Chaps like your goods self and others still rocking and rolling and then that millstone is lifted .
    I am going to see you at Reading in September although it's not listed.
    All the best Eric.
    May you have many more healthy years in front of you.

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  4. Alan holbourne22 May 2024 at 01:11

    I so enjoy these blogs 🙂 I too reached the golden age of 71 ....gives you an excuse not too behave I suppose, as the great ian dury said " break a few rules " keep happy eric

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  5. I hadn't read your blog for quite a while but for some unknown reason (maybe having reached 73) waking up this morning I thought I'd give it a butcher's look. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
    It's still as sharp, honest and very well written as it ever were. You ain't lost the knack.
    Keep on going the whole wide world.
    Frenchie

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  6. Eric in your book you mention Vernon truscott he sounds like the same person I knew about that time but he called himself Vernon rossiter absolute arse told me he was Paul mcartneys accountant lived in East Grinstead...says it all.

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    Replies
    1. I couldn't possibly comment... But I think it was West Grinstead.

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    2. West Grinstead of course.

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  7. I love reading your blog. Keeps me feeling useful at 62

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