Getting Older

In my early years with the best part of my three score years and ten before me and when time only accelerated during the school holidays, everybody seemed old , even the police cadets.

I’m old enough to remember Lonnie Donegan and skiffle, if I really stretch my mind I can remember the heydays of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior. Alma Cogan, Vera Lynn and Connie Francis were regularly requested on Forces Favourites. But they all seem to be hidden behind the curtain that was Rock ‘n’ Roll, Bill Haley’s music was like an electric charge and everything changed. I’m told that teenagers slashed cinema seats in their strange way of expressing enthusiasm for the new music. I knew nothing about that at the time, there was no cinema in Saundersfoot! Very soon we had the curling lips and gyrating hips of Elvis Presley.

I have long thought that the musical trend of your teens defines you throughout your life. Yes, music developed from Rock and we had the harmonies of The Eagles and Simon and Garfunkel then Eric Clapton and Lynyrd Skynyrd and I grew up alongside that but the greater part of current music that I hear holds little appeal for me and I realise I am getting older.

Humour has changed too. We used to have brilliant comedy writers who knew the art of building up to a punch line, they crafted sentences with double meanings and built up their half hour slot in such a way that your sides would be aching as you slid uncontrollably off the settee. You could enjoy the comedy alongside your Granny and Grandad, or even a passing vicar!

Think of Roy Clarke’s ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, ‘Open all Hours’ and ‘Keeping up Appearances’ with Hyacinth Bouquet. The late Alan Plater wrote many episodes of different dramas over the years and you could always tell which ones because he had rather a special humour. Do you remember The Beiderbecke Affair starring James Bolan and Barbara Flynn? Very clever and very funny with the haunting strains of Bix Beiderbecke’s jazz running through it. Why is it not repeated when so many less worthy programmes seem to crop up over and over again? We had ‘Porridge’, ‘Dad’s Army’, ‘Auf Wiedersehein Pet’, ‘Morecambe and Wise’, ‘Only Fools and Horses’, ‘Dinner Ladies’, ‘Ever Decreasing Circles’, those writers possessed skill and we could settle ourselves down for sheer, blissful enjoyment.

Humour works up to the point that it is close to the bone, after that it just becomes an exercise in creating bigger and bigger shocks to the sensitivity and drags itself further and further down into crudity.

After having listed what I have enjoyed over the years I suppose I should now list those that I find tedious and boring.

Well, I won’t because it would be Pointless!

Yes, I really am getting older and I felt it very strongly today when I was browsing through The Times and I came across the advert for Scottish Widows Insurance Co. I don’t know if you can remember it, you must do, it incorporates a picture of a lady in a black hooded cloak and she has always been very attractive, in the past she has always seemed to be older than me but suddenly she looks as if she is in her early 20s. I have been having panic attacks all day, even the Scottish Widow is younger than me, much younger than me!

I have been trying to comfort myself by arguing that the mortality rate is suddenly high north of the border because of the addiction of young men to deep fried Mars bars! It’s not working though!

Pass the Sanatogen please, Dear. …. I said PASS THE SANATOGEN PLEASE, DEAR! Oh Lord! I think she’s gone deaf now.

Oh Heck!

Kind messages of condolences would be much appreciated.

Copyright 2004 - 2015 Wennol Photography all rights reserved