Great Middle Aged Moments.
*I'm chatting to a girl in a bar about her band. "Who do you sound like?" "I don't really know," she says, "some people think we sound like a band called The Pixies. Do you know them?" "It's Pixies, actually," I say, "I was at their first ever London gig. They were supporting Throwing Muses, if you can believe that."
She smiles.
"Think it it would be the other way round wouldn't you? But it wasn't."
Her smile tightens. She's in her early twenties. I calculate that gig took place a good ten years before she was born. And anyway, everyone says The Pixies.
"I was always a Throwing Muses fan," I continue, "They had three girls in the band. Women. The Pixies only had one, so..."
I go to the bar.
*I've been asked to fill in a moderation form for an application. Its standard stuff and I fill it in while half watching the telly and half chatting to Susan, because hey, who says men can't multi-task? This form is like dozens I've completed except in one regard: the fields aren't populated. Normally when you fill one in there are tickable boxes provided for religion, sexual orientation and even age. Not on this one.
I complete the list and send it off to the people who have requested I do it, both women in their twenties. Its only after looking back at the email that I realise with horror that I have not described my sexual orientation as heterosexual as I would normally do. No. I've written straight.
Straight.
As in "not bent".
I am mortified. It's bad enough filling in a moderation form where you have to describe yourself as a middle aged, white, heterosexual man. On paper I look like the most gammony gammon of all time, furiously shaking my copy of the Express because the cruise I bought from surrendering the equity in my home had an outbreak of Corona virus on it, and I spent six weeks circling the Adriatic in a face mask.
Turns out I'm a straight bloke. Straight. Supermarket jeans, speak as I find, confused about Priti Patel. Straight.
I send them a follow up e mail but it was too late. There was no way anyone was going to give me any money of the back of my privileged profile.
I received begging letters by return mail.
(No I didn't)
*My brother has sent me a new phone. He is a practical and reasonable man and he is only three years younger than me. So he thinks I can handle his kind offer. After all, he has found me a plan that is half the price of my current one with three or four times the data. My phone is nearly four or five years old, a nanosecond in my lifetime, but apparently phone technology has warped and distended into strange new fruit in that time so my current sim card is laughably obsolete.
Barry "Face-times" me, the first time I have ever done such a thing, and becomes aware of the problem: I am a circus monkey. I can ride a bicycle, host a sloppy tea-party and smoke a cigar. But if you put any technology in front of me I will scream and fling poo at you with my feet. As I say there are only three years between us but Barry is an international business man with two small children - if he couldn't use technology he wouldn't be able to live. Whereas I have no children and spend most of my time scratching poor ideas into a notebook in bus shelters. I am tech-averse. In fact nothing drives me to distraction so much as technology that refuses to do what its told: it works one day, it fails to work the next. It turns me into a slavering beast, a screaming poo cannon.
So, the phone...
After a while I removed the sim. We looked at it. Skimmed the literature. Left it.
We invited Joe and his son Eli for dinner. I got Eli to fit the sim card. I trusted him because he is young. We left it.
Susan started looking at the info. We sat down and, methodically, between us (Susan working patiently through the procedure, me flinging poo) and set the phone up. It mostly works now. Phone calls. I'll get round to learning how to text and take photos. Eventually it will be come indispensable, like the last one which took me a couple of months to acclimatise to did. Sorry Barry.
I'm an old fool.
But its NEARLY sorted. I think. Thanks Baz - happy birthday to me.
She smiles.
"Think it it would be the other way round wouldn't you? But it wasn't."
Her smile tightens. She's in her early twenties. I calculate that gig took place a good ten years before she was born. And anyway, everyone says The Pixies.
"I was always a Throwing Muses fan," I continue, "They had three girls in the band. Women. The Pixies only had one, so..."
I go to the bar.
 |
| I have no idea who this is. It isn't me. |
*I've been asked to fill in a moderation form for an application. Its standard stuff and I fill it in while half watching the telly and half chatting to Susan, because hey, who says men can't multi-task? This form is like dozens I've completed except in one regard: the fields aren't populated. Normally when you fill one in there are tickable boxes provided for religion, sexual orientation and even age. Not on this one.
I complete the list and send it off to the people who have requested I do it, both women in their twenties. Its only after looking back at the email that I realise with horror that I have not described my sexual orientation as heterosexual as I would normally do. No. I've written straight.
Straight.
As in "not bent".
I am mortified. It's bad enough filling in a moderation form where you have to describe yourself as a middle aged, white, heterosexual man. On paper I look like the most gammony gammon of all time, furiously shaking my copy of the Express because the cruise I bought from surrendering the equity in my home had an outbreak of Corona virus on it, and I spent six weeks circling the Adriatic in a face mask.
Turns out I'm a straight bloke. Straight. Supermarket jeans, speak as I find, confused about Priti Patel. Straight.
I send them a follow up e mail but it was too late. There was no way anyone was going to give me any money of the back of my privileged profile.
I received begging letters by return mail.
(No I didn't)
*My brother has sent me a new phone. He is a practical and reasonable man and he is only three years younger than me. So he thinks I can handle his kind offer. After all, he has found me a plan that is half the price of my current one with three or four times the data. My phone is nearly four or five years old, a nanosecond in my lifetime, but apparently phone technology has warped and distended into strange new fruit in that time so my current sim card is laughably obsolete.
Barry "Face-times" me, the first time I have ever done such a thing, and becomes aware of the problem: I am a circus monkey. I can ride a bicycle, host a sloppy tea-party and smoke a cigar. But if you put any technology in front of me I will scream and fling poo at you with my feet. As I say there are only three years between us but Barry is an international business man with two small children - if he couldn't use technology he wouldn't be able to live. Whereas I have no children and spend most of my time scratching poor ideas into a notebook in bus shelters. I am tech-averse. In fact nothing drives me to distraction so much as technology that refuses to do what its told: it works one day, it fails to work the next. It turns me into a slavering beast, a screaming poo cannon.
So, the phone...
After a while I removed the sim. We looked at it. Skimmed the literature. Left it.
We invited Joe and his son Eli for dinner. I got Eli to fit the sim card. I trusted him because he is young. We left it.
Susan started looking at the info. We sat down and, methodically, between us (Susan working patiently through the procedure, me flinging poo) and set the phone up. It mostly works now. Phone calls. I'll get round to learning how to text and take photos. Eventually it will be come indispensable, like the last one which took me a couple of months to acclimatise to did. Sorry Barry.
I'm an old fool.
But its NEARLY sorted. I think. Thanks Baz - happy birthday to me.
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