Third Age?

          Currently, I’m reading a novel about mental illness*. It’s written in the first person, which helps me appreciate the complexity of the narrator’s predicament rather than seeing him simply as a random patient. It was a coincidence, therefore, when, this morning, I came across this extract from Melville: “Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colours, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity”. Then, in a further coincidence, I looked up and saw a rainbow that had appeared, conveniently, for me to test his proposition.

          The rainbow analogy could be applied also to the range of political or ideological views blending into one another, though it seems that polarisation too often supplants this rosy view and we find ourselves at loggerheads with each other. It was with this sort of thing in mind that I originally joined the local University of the Third Age (U3A) Discussion Group. I was disappointed at first that it did not live up to my vision of stimulating sessions where ideas and theories are exchanged and tested with rigorous philosophical analysis in the academic mould. But I’m over that now. We are just a random group of ‘third-agers’, keen to stay engaged with the world and its dilemmas. Our discussions run more along the lines of anecdote-swapping and statements of ‘facts’ based on the unsupported premise that “most people would agree that… blah”. But the upside of this is that, by attending regularly, we get to know each other and, so long as our discussions are held together by a modicum of intellectual rigour, they benefit from our familiarity with our respective backgrounds and the way they influence our views. (If only this process could transfer to Parliament, we might have more empathy in politics. But there is too much power at stake for politicians to play nicely.)

          Getting to know each other in our U3A group is a gradual process: not everyone is immediately forthcoming about themselves but, over time, we reveal our histories. However, there’s one man who remains a bit of a mystery. I know him only as David and have been told that he’s “well into his nineties”. If so, he’s in good health. He told us last week that he had never had a bout of the flu! But he does have an air of other-worldliness about him. He has no phone and relies on a daughter to keep his diary, which is perhaps why he always comes unprepared for the topic. Nor does he concern himself with the ‘discussion’ format, interjecting occasionally only to make us aware of his pet concerns, be they relevant or not. Unlike the rest of us, he makes no pretence of trying to remember names and shows no interest in the other members.

          He tells us he is vegetarian and would never harm an animal. He described how he rescued a bee from a spider’s web in his garden, taking an hour to disentangle it from the silken thread so that it could fly away (thus depriving the spider of a meal, a point he had failed to consider). He then pulled out a cutting from the local paper, a letter he had written demanding five-years in jail for anyone found carrying a knife. He has previously advocated (in the group) compulsory national service in the armed forces and the return of capital punishment as part of his plan to rescue society from the depths to which it has descended.

          He may be exercising that privilege of extreme age – freedom from vanity and the need to care about what others think. Or it may be that he inhabits that zone where violet and orange blend.

*The Shock of the Fall, Nathan Filer (2013).

It's a Long Story

          I enjoy train journeys when they are comfortable, calm and punctual, but there is something to be said for them even when they fail to live up to those ideals: if you’re uncomfortable you can turn your tribulation into a test of resilience and come out of it feeling stoic or heroic; if there is no calm, you can counter by joining in and relishing the chaos; and if the train is late, you can claim a refund (in which case, the later the better). But there is another category of hazard, let’s call it ‘minor irritation’, that can escalate to ‘infuriation’, unless you take control of your reactions or find a way to divert your attention from the source.

          On a train last week, I sat within earshot of a woman who, in a loud, shrill voice, talked to her travelling companion continuously during the three-hour journey. This could have been fascinating had she been recounting amusing anecdotes, but she wasn’t. She recounted her stories, which were about the activities of a particular group of people of their mutual acquaintance, at great length and in great detail, frequently introducing extraneous characters that had no discernible bearing on the plot. Then, at long last, as if she could feel her audience slipping away, she would say, “…anyway, long story short…”, a sure prelude to the denouement that had long since become apparent or had ceased to be of interest anyway. How I wish that, as we were leaving the train, I had slipped her a note inscribed with Alfred Hitchcock’s words - “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

          All right, so she was not an accomplished raconteur, but the stories themselves were unnecessarily lengthy. A properly long story might, for example, be that of the Parker family, who lived at Saltram House, at Plympton, just outside Plymouth, from 1740 until 1957, when they gave the grand house and rolling estate to the National Trust. You can plough through three hundred years of written history if you want, but a more agreeable way to absorb it is to visit the house (which I did last week), where the rooms are staffed by knowledgeable volunteers ready and willing to share with you all they know. One of the particular skills they have is the ability to sense whether or not a visitor actually wants to hear the stories. Visitors, for their part, are advised to be aware of this. If you don’t want to hear what the guide has to say but have already made eye-contact, nod, smile politely, gaze around you with mildly expressed interest and move on. But, even if you’re already familiar with the history or the objets d’art, it may still pay to engage with the guides, some of whom invest the narrative with their own take on things. I particularly liked the cheeky old chap in the room full of mirrors painted by Chinese artists with scenes that were difficult to make sense of, until he pointed out, with a wink and a grin, that the underlying theme was pornographic.

          In another foray into local history, I subscribed to a guided tour of Stoke Damerel Church and its environs. This one was led by a professional guide, accomplished at holding the attention of an audience. He really did have a long story to tell, as the original structure had been built in Saxon times, but he was practised in the art of editing and presented us with the salient facts of historical interest, pointing out where they are evident still in the building and its surroundings. I could, of course go on to explain why the tower of this church is adorned with an enormous clock (still working) and why Stoke became Stoke Damerel but, long story short, our heritage is a rich repository for those who are curious and who make time to learn.

X?

          When Twitter became X, I was faced with a dilemma. The home screen on my phone is devoted to all the various communications apps (whether I use them or not) and I had become used to seeing the friendly little birdie symbol perched eagerly in the bottom left hand corner, where it had been since I first adopted it. Then, one day, it changed suddenly into a sinister-looking white X on a deadly black background and I didn’t like the look of it at all. It reminded me of the Z painted on Putin’s assault vehicles, aggressive and devoid of empathy.

          Actually, I had stopped consulting Twitter some time ago, despairing somewhat at its limits as a medium of reasoned discourse, so there is absolutely no chance of my diving into X in the hope that things have got better. If the designer’s brief was to come up with a logo that says “nasty, aggressive, intolerant and macho”, then they nailed it. Of course, we know that the X logo is all part of Elon Musk’s persona anyway and I suspect that any ‘brief’ would have been simply an instruction to make the existing graphic function on a small screen. Whatever, the result is that what I see is the bird of hope crushed into oblivion by the steamroller of populism.

          And my dilemma? Since I couldn’t bear to see the horrid X every time I looked at my phone, I had to either delete it or banish it to the last page of apps, the one where reside all those that are little used due to their being obscure, useless or incomprehensible, i.e. system tools that you dare not delete. I chose to keep X, on the grounds that, one day, I might need it for research or reference purposes (it is, after all, a communications tool of sorts), so I dragged it to the back page, where it doesn’t really belong: it ought to be on the front page, where all the other comms live, neatly organised in a subtly graduated pattern (distinguishable only by me) that foregrounds my most frequently-used apps and leaves the others languishing on the margins.

          You’re probably thinking that I need to lighten up, but I like to adhere to systems for a reason: it makes my life easier to manage. And not just in the realm of digital filing. Take the fridge, for example (which is sort of what happened this week). After a few days of nose-wrinkling, I detected the source of an unpleasant smell in the kitchen: it was a festering damp patch, of mysterious origin, on the concrete floor behind the fridge. I moved the fridge to another position while the source was traced and where it must remain until the concrete dries out. Days later, I keep reaching for the fridge only to find there is a void where the fridge should be. And exactly the same thing happened when I moved the Spotify app (inadvertently) to a different position on the phone screen: months later I am still unaccustomed to its ‘new’ position but, worse, can’t restore it to the old one precisely because its removal was inadvertent.

          I would like to think I was not always so rigidly dependent on organised systems, habitual behaviours and predictable outcomes. I recall that, briefly, in my youth, there was spontaneity, flexibility and openness, all of which were eventually reined in by schooling, the pressures of cultural conformity and – it has to be admitted – my own innate need for order and tranquillity. Still, I have a coping mechanism: it’s called ‘conscious spontaneity’ and consists of making spaces for free-form activities between the otherwise pre-allocated slots. Some people call them holidays.    

Pain in the Neck?

          It was during an extended period of travelling that I began to suspect the mattress at home was the cause of my lower-back pain. Most mornings, for the last couple of years, I have been obliged to perform certain stretches that ease the muscles so that I can bend without wincing. Yet, when rising from other beds elsewhere, I have sprung into action without so much as a twinge. So, the argument for buying a new mattress was compelling and, after some research, I acquired what I hoped might be the right type. I can return it after a trial period (do they really take used mattresses back and, if so, what do they do with them?) but, so far, so good. So good, in fact, that I’m inclined to ask for a refund from the ineffectual physiotherapist I consulted recently. So, I have made my bed and now I will lie on it.

          It was, then, without pain that I bent to the task of cycling yesterday to the Devonport Naval Heritage Centre for a close look at the driving force of our local history. The collection of artefacts is spread around three re-purposed stone buildings that date back to the 1820s, which lends authenticity to the experience. However, because the whole thing is run by volunteers and with minimal funding, it has its shortcomings – accessibility and dodgy displays being two of them. But the enthusiastic volunteers can be relied upon to supplement the story with tales and reminiscences of their own, since they are all retired from either the Royal Navy or the Royal Naval Dockyard. But however much they might regret it, their ‘glory days’ are over, I’m sure. Nobody wants ships full of men to be torpedoed when drones can be employed to slug it out instead. Or do they?

          One of the buildings is dedicated to the origins of the Navy, the era of sail, and it was here that I was reminded that many phrases used to this day originated in maritime adventuring. For example, the side of a sailing ship was called a board. So, if any rigging was carried away in a storm, it was said to be “gone by the board”. Likewise, anything on the top deck of a ship or open to inspection was referred to as “above board”. So intrigued was I by these snippets that I walked right into a low-slung hammock with a dummy sailor in it. He looked uncomfortable and I’d bet they suffered terrible back-pain in those days.

          I absorbed more local history during the week when I visited the ancestral home of the Edgcumbe family, across the river in Cornwall. The estate has been publicly owned since 1971, when the 7^th earl decided he’d had enough and sold it to a consortium comprising Cornwall County Council and Plymouth City Council. The story is that he, a nephew of the childless 6^th earl, had inherited unexpectedly and, having meanwhile made a life for himself as a sheep farmer in New Zealand, was urged to come back to England and his lordly duties. But he just could not settle to his aristocratic circumstances. Indeed, he showed his plebeian tendencies by taking up with a local barmaid and establishing her in his four-poster (which looked jolly comfortable, by the way). In the end, he tired of trying to keep up the social appearances expected of his forbears, took the money and ran.

          By the way, no sooner did my back recover, than my Other Half reported having developed a troublesome stiff neck. So, today, I took delivery of a pair of (very expensive) pillows from the company that made the mattress, in the hope that her condition will be alleviated – and that I will not develop one similar. Of course, it is a bit of a long shot*.

* Early ships’ guns tended to be inaccurate. If a shot made impact from a great distance, or a “long shot,” it was considered out of the ordinary.