Tuesday, December 11, 2007

40 is the New Dead

Every year I go to various Sunday Times Christmas parties and every year there are more people I have to avoid. This is not because they dislike me or I them, it is because I can't remember their names. I blame the sheer weight of time - not that my memory is going (sometimes I wish it would), rather the number of people I have met has increased to the point where I can only attach names to a small proportion in any given crowd. Perhaps it is also because I have an under-developed irrelevance filter. In party conversations, I tend to find myself fixated on ties, agonised expressions, architectural details, stony silences, dentistry, canapes, shoes, carpets - anything, in fact, but words and names. (This could, of course, mean that I have an exceptionally well-developed irrelevance filter.) But the upside of the weight of time is that there seems to come a moment when people like/tolerate/accept you more than they once did. This happens in your fifties. Perhaps it is because one is no longer seen as any kind of threat - or because nobody can remember one's name and they're just being desperately polite. I say this to encourage Iain Dale who is fretting about being 45. Trust me, Iain, it gets much better. In fact, I now see that around the age of 25 people go into a long decline. By the age of 40, they are, to all intents and purposes, dead. Sadly, nobody has the heart to tell them and they keep doing silly things like marketing, public relations, estate agency or remembering everybody's name. Then, miraculously, at 50 they spring back to life and start doing sensible things like trying to remember obscure Bob Dylan lyrics or turning round people's ties to read the label while being talked to at parties. Or perhaps that's just me.

27 comments:

  1. This question may seem a tad harsh, but when you mention various parties, could you put a figure, 'tis kinda important. And not in a twonky socratic- lets piss off the entire village- sort of way. More in that, what could reasonably be expected/ Clapham omnibus man thereon, sort.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Three, Vince, or four if you include another paper's do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yet again, Mr Appleyard, you have got my day off to a bad start. I don't need someone telling me I have been in steady decline for the last ten years or so. First thing in the morning, I need something quite like the opposite of that. You know what, now that you bring it up, it does strike me that in a work context at least and to a lesser extent outside of work I have been repeating myself for at least the last five years. That is, I can't think of anything useful to say or do most of the time other than what I have said or done before. It probably has something to do with the fact that I am nearly always more interested in something other than what is in front of me. In other words, I'm perpetually distracted. I'm not even interested in myself half the time. That can't be good. Maybe I am dead, but just didn't notice. You have a nice day, you heartless swine. I won't.

    ReplyDelete
  4. who goes to a party wearing a tie?!!

    don't bother answering, they're probably not worth remembering...

    the worst is when you can't remember the name but you know the face! after five minutes conversation you realise it was someone else's face you remembered.

    ReplyDelete
  5. i don't mean to encourage you to destroy your career or anything, but i think the best way to approach Christmas parties and religious festivals is as an opportunity to commit sex crimes, to physically intimidate hated rivals, deliberately spill drinks on women, smuggle wildlife in in your pockets, steal pets (in the same pockets, once emptied of the wildlife), throw plantpots out of windows, and - of course - start a fight.

    It would probably help if you & Nige turn up wearing motorbike helmets and toting baseball bats.

    ReplyDelete
  6. it's also vital that one be sober in the performance of these crimes. Any journalist can get drunk and make a fool out of himself; it takes a man to cold-bloodedly pretend to be drunk in order to take down his rivals, humiliate his equals and steal from his lessers, all the while saying 'whoops, sorry, had a bit too much to drink'.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yet again elberry presents us with a compelling strategy. There should be a column, like Dear Mary in the Spectator, only aimed at sociopath bloggers (of which, I venture, there are more than a few).

    ReplyDelete
  8. So, Brian, what happens between the ages of 40 and 50? You continue to work? You stroll around like an extra from Shaun of the Dead, unaware that your time has come? Do you have a nervous breakdown? Did you have a nervous breakdown?

    I wonder if a nervous breakdown is the moment when you realise that you're dead. That your 40 years, your career, your once-sexy wife and countless offspring are worthless. That you want to destroy it all... (as suggested by the learned Elberry).

    Maybe this 50 year old renaissance is simply the drugs and the therapy talking? Maybe the mellow 50 year old is the New New Man?

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's Bryan, Stephen. No, the offspring are far from countless - one - the wife still sexy, the therapy, drugs etc avoided and no nervous breakdown - though how would one know? But I am, of course, the New New Man.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bryan eh? The face is familiar - never forget a...

    ReplyDelete
  11. The basis for my behaviour, and the good advice i have to offer others, is the sobering prospect of death. Surely it's better to have lived an amusing life, constantly embarrassing your family, alienating your co-workers, getting fired & blacklisted and imprisoned, and becoming a kind of folk hero akin to Robin Hood or Bryan 'Merciless' Appleyard than to be some balding fool with no adventures, no boastings, no manliness or pirate boots or swagger, no blustering oaths and blasphemies, no poetry, no soul, no God nor Devil neither.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I suspect that the mellowest one gets is at around 40-45 and is the result of exhaustion and being ground down by the man. By 50 it's dawned that only a very few things really matter and the rest don't merit a flying eff. In fact the things that really matter may be things that had never before occurred to one. At which point Elberry's righteous anger comes into its own and it's time to start growing old disgracefully. I suppose you could call this a breakdown but probably best not to suggest this to anyone wearing a crash helmet at a party. Arai make good ones though Shoei are excellent if your shoplifting skills are up for it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Got any buyer's advice on baseball bats, Mark?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Films like 'Unforgiven' and 'Wonderboys', 'The Shootist', 'Open Range', are great depictions of just how blustery and hilarious and violent the elderly can be, Yeats-like. Just as Yeats & Wallace Stevens just got better & better, and by God they had to die or they would have broken through some barrier, so too one should aim to grow old disgracefully, like a wicked goat (as i believe Yeats said of himself).

    It's fine for young bucks like me to frot MILF and throw objects at our bosses, but it's another thing entirely when an elder statesman does these things; then it's art.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sorry about the mis-spelling of your name, Bryan.

    I don't put much stock in names myself.

    We are afflicted with them by our loving parents. And then forced to endure them indefinitely.

    In some cases, really afflicted, and we end up changing our name to Finn or something equally improbable in a desperate attempt to regain some dignity (and failing).

    Sometimes people refer to me as "Steven" and I genuinely don't realise that they are talking to me. I have no identification with the name or any other for that matter. I guess that I am more than the label my parents applied.

    Oh, my apology still stands, by the way...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Steve, you should change your name to Dave. You'll feel to be a different man.

    ReplyDelete
  17. There are a great many Daves afoot in the world. Perhaps too many. Steve, can i suggest changing your name to 'Buffalo Bill'?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Elberry wrote: "It's another thing entirely when an elder statesman does these things; then it's art." Interesting. I wonder if the pensioner who was recently ticked off for breaking wind in a social club could sue the management for restraint of trade, on the grounds that he is an artist and they are preventing him from following his craft. As for films, I liked Alan Arkin's all too brief role as a doubtfully well-behaved oldie in Little Miss Sunshine.

    Bryan, I apologise if my previous post upset you (or others) in some way. Joking. I know nothing about bats anyway. They interfere with the aerodynamics of the bike.

    ReplyDelete
  19. i'd like to apologise too. i haven't apologised yet this year, and it's almost over.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Blech. I avoid parties at all costs, except for dinner parties comprised of people I really like. Better to stay home and read "War and Peace." (I'm in the homestretch -- my God, what a great book!)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Bryan, I too was at The Sunday Times party last night but completely missed you. Does this mean: a) You can't remember my name, or b) I can't remember yours.
    All the best
    Roland White
    (Shortish, thinnish chap. Darkish hair. Blue suit. Come on, you remember)

    ReplyDelete
  22. Roland White? Roland White? I seem to remember somebody of that names. Itw as the books party- were you there, whoever you are?

    ReplyDelete
  23. If I was at the books party, then I don't remember it. Which means either it was very good, or my memory is worse than your theory suggests. But you were at the Gherkin party on Weds night, weren't you? Or have I completely misunderstood this strand?
    Roland

    ReplyDelete
  24. Yep I was at Gherkin - see P{rince Albert and the Gherkin, my later post

    ReplyDelete