I have mentioned my memory before. It is, to say the least, poor. I inherited it from my father and enhanced its deficiencies with my hormones. It is inconveniently abysmal. It is the reason that I find myself writing this piece at 11.30pm when I should be in bed. I will, or may, have forgotten what I wanted to write by morning.
So here I sit, pondering life and how amazing it is and why I at 50 find it so much more interesting than almost 17 year old Horace who seems permanently bored unless listening to her type of music (which sounds just like the stuff I used to listen to) or talking to her type of boy or reading her type of book.
My musings lead me to the conclusion that experience of life is the only thing that enables a person to understand its diversity and potential. As a child I never experienced a supermarket and now I would find it hard to live without that automated, beeping, brightly lit, all providing entity. My first transistor radio was state of the art and measured about six inches by three, I now have a tiny thing about an inch square that hooks on my belt on the infrequent occasions when I do exercise. The swings, when I was a child, consisted of apparatus no modern day child would be allowed to go near: the “extremely dangerous” witch’s hat and rocking horse as well as swings embedded in a concrete base. Nowadays the slides aren’t slippery, the rocking horse barely moves and the witch’s hat is too risky for councils to even contemplate. These things, among many, make me appreciate that the future could be beyond my wildest imaginings. I sometimes think of what we have today and compare it to the lot of stone-age man. He lived a mere millimetre away on the number line of history and yet he would not recognise this world in which we live.
Two completely amazing facts, one about the theatre and one about a penguin, came to my notice recently and I was delighted and entertained by them. (more…)