Remember the Spectrum, Grandpa?

I wrote something about growing old earlier this week, which this piece complements. It’s an oldie, if you’ll excuse the very shite and very unintended pun. As I was scouring through files on my laptop I came across this little age-related-rant that I whipped up seven years ago, inspired by Terry Christian… – Jamie

Good for you, being all hip and that, grandma. Unfortunately, your old fucking fingers are now stuck like that.

I heard an advert on the radio the other night. Naturally, because I’m so old, I had to turn up the volume to hear it. That was only after a little clenching and unclenching of my arthritic fingers, just to warm them up. It’s impossible to twiddle the controls these days with the springy, cavalier ease which I recall I exhibited in my youth. Well, I can just about recall it; senile dementia is no laughing matter, you know. 

I’m 25, by the way. Sure, I’m nearer thirty than twenty, and most of my friends are prepared or preparing to enter the 2.4 children phase of their lives; but am I past it? I’m still just a kid.

Not according to Terry Christian; nor to the cosmetics giant that employs him to advertise their products. The product being hocked was some sort of anti-aging face-cream for guys, and the company was Oil of Ulay, or Nivea, or something. Never matter. It was their pitch – not their product – that irked me.

Here’s the gist of it.

Probably best not to take lifestyle advice from this prick.

Terry asked whether or not I remembered the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I do. I had one. When I was five. And I loved it. Apparently, so Terry claims, fond memories of and familiarity with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum places me in the category of men who should really start to worry about the effects of ageing on their peeling, wrinkled old faces. I repeat, for the record: I am 25. 25 years old.

Don’t the executives at whatever company this is have enough of a customer-base in people who are, oh, let’s say, significantly older than me? Not to be ageist, of course; but I know a lot of people who are the same age as me and never have I regarded them as old sows and warlocks a mere fifteen minutes from the morgue.

This tactic, which seems to me like a profit-boosting pre-emptive strike, makes me fear for the future. I can just hear the greedy little buffoons in the boardroom now: ‘Let’s generate a mass hysteria about ageing and convince perfectly young, smooth-skinned people that the modern world has destroyed, or will destroy imminently, their youthful looks, and so their only hope of facial salvation lies in our safe, money-grabbing hands.’ Maybe these people – these ingenious arseholes – believe, or hope, that the wrinkled masses will begin using their product through their late teens into their dotage, and finally become so terrified to stop using it – lest they age forty years overnight and then die – that perhaps even the mortician will be persuaded to trowel some on to them as they lie rigid in their coffins.

“SO YOU’RE DEAD? IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T STILL TURN HEADS.”

Just how far down the age spectrum are these bastards willing to boldly go? I’m willing to bet a split infinitive that their pound-lust knows no limits.

‘So, how old are you?’

‘I’m six.’

‘Huh… but you look ten.’

Batty – definitely worth a hot splodge over your new 50inch HD. Look at the way the old whore handles that broom. She’s asking for it.

Can it be that the same society telling us that young people effectively run the world is also telling us that the price we pay for ruling the world is to look fifty when we’re thirty? Media and marketing cunts have spent many years convincing us on television, satellite and radio that the days of the wise old elder are over; that the old are decrepit fools who can’t keep up with the pace of channel-changing, green-hair-dyeing, sex-in-the-city-watching, metro-sexual modern life. Long live the adolescent seems to be the credo. Are we to infer that the stress of sustaining this reversal of status is burning us out?

We’re all having our mid-life crises in our twenties; we’re all on Prozac; checking in to Betty Ford clinics; going to stress counsellors; buying anti-ageing products by the bucket-load.

Has our Picture of Dorian Gray syndrome caught up with us so early?

Anyway, that’s a snack for thought. I’m off to sort out my funeral plan and jet up to the bathroom in my Stenna Stairlift. Is Last of the Summer Wine on tonight? Maybe I’ll be able to sustain my ancient erection just long enough to crack one off over Nora Batty.

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In case you missed it, here’s the piece I wrote last week about turning 32: http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/13/happy-birthday/

 

Happy Birthday?

Me, and how I stay youthful.

I just turned 32.

This is a strange age. It’s the age where people start dying; or at least the age where it starts to become less of a surprise when your friends and acquaintances keel over like pit canaries.

‘They were so… young,’ we say, not quite believing the words as they stagger uncertainly from our lips. It’s almost framed as a question. ‘They were so… young?’

I’ve always been certain that a heart attack will serve as the final sentence in the book of my life. I’m not psychic: just Scottish. At death, most pasty-skinned Celts will find the Grim Reaper holding their engorged heart in his bony hand, bouncing it like a blood-filled happy-sack as he points to the fat-smeared hole in their chest and says: ‘Looking for this, you fat bastard?’ Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind. Jamie Andrew’s heart is destined to burst like a rotten peach under the treads of a tank.

Fuck you, Murphy. You're shite at living.

I become filled with anxiety when I hear of a celebrity dying in their early 30s. As if their premature death somehow makes my own more likely. Brittany Murphy, Heath Ledger: they both gave me palpitations. When a celebrity dies young I always chant inside my head ‘Please be drugs, please be drugs, please be drugs, please be drugs,’ and when it’s drugs I fist the air and shout ‘YES!!’ Which is pretty horrible of me, but then I never claimed to be anything other than a deeply, deeply horrible human being. They die of drugs, I don’t die of a heart attack. Yet. That’s the deal.

I guess I am still young, though. I look young, so I’m told, despite the rainforests of hair that seem to sprout from every available orifice. What’s with that? So much hair grows from my ears that I could pleat it and join Aswad. No joke. Bed bugs could abseil from my ear lobe down to my shoulder. This shouldn’t happen until I’m in my sixties or something, right? I don’t want to look like my grandfather just yet. Well, he’s dead, so of course I don’t want to look like him. I meant I don’t want to look like he did during his twilight years. Not at 32, anyway. His ears looked like they had boom mikes coming out of them. And the ears themselves were all waxy and gnarly, making him look like the head Ferengi from Star Trek.

My nose is no different, over-abundance-of-hair-wise. I always notice the hairs in the mirror when I’m driving, and then spend about five minutes yanking what look like wires from my nostrils. So if you’re on the roads in Falkirk, look out for a big tall guy clawing at his face and screaming in horror at his reflection: that’ll be me. So much hair dangles from my nose that it looks like a tarantula is trying to escape from my face. Honestly, it’s like steel wool. I could headbutt a pot and scour it at the same time.

It's the Argos Nose Hair remover I've got, if you're interested.

Which is why my mother gave me an electric nose-and-ear-hair remover for my birthday. No shit. She did. And do you know what the worst thing is? I was grateful. It’s something I need. At 32? Next year it’ll be a Noel Edmonds’ sweater and a brochure for a SAGA holiday. And bring on the socks and pants. I love getting socks and pants now. I wish I’d been more grateful to my grandparents when I was younger, and hadn’t just sneered when I ripped open the wrapping paper to find yet another 5-pack of Asda’s-own boxer shorts. I didn’t realise what a valuable commodity they were back then. Thank you, grandma and grandpa (X2). I sometimes think they were trying to tell me, in some hush-hush yet none-too-subtle grandparent code, that growing old is pants. I think they were on to something.

Anyway, here’s to the next 32. Well… maybe.