Old enough to know

Yesterday my brother sent me one of his random texts asking me: What was that group you used to love that sang Size of a Cow? I texted back as fast as my fingers can tap out on that stupid touch screen that means if you are a mm out that the predictive text gets turned off, or you get a space you didn't really want, or a word you didn't really want. So, five minutes later I had typed out Wonderstuff (forget the 'The' it would have added too much undue stress).

Later that day, I found myself tapping out The Wonderstuff again, but this time into Youtube. I love Youtube, because everything you ever want to explain is there. I once spent hours sending links to the Frog so that he could see all the adverts that I grew up with. I know, the question you are asking is why? But, it started with one thing and led to another. Anyway, back to my point.

One day on the beach Just niece announced that she was proud to be ten because she had two numbers in her age. Her comment made me smile, because I remember my tenth birthday being a milestone for just that reason, I had reached my first decade. But now, here I am having reached my first decade in Paris. And I look at past pictures and the creases at the corners of my eyes and the silver threads that run through my hair, but despite these obvious signs I just don't feel old. Changed, certainly, but not old.

And there was someone's video uploaded of Miles Hunt singing Sing the Absurd. I remember hearing a live session on Marc Radcliffe's show many many years ago and falling in love with that song and yesterday all those words burrowed their way out from the back of my brain and came belting out. Miles, in this video is wearing a black suit and black t shirt. He has short hair, with a floppy fringe. The large hoop earrings lost in the mop of curly hair are gone and I can't tell whether he's got a big pair of boots on as the camera doesn't pan down that far. And there was a little part of me that was shocked: He's gone and got all grown up!

I mused at my surprise as I was doing the dishes today. He grew up, Andy Kershaw is fifty and I'm going to a friend's 40th birthday in two weeks. Somehow it seems that all these people have grown up, but I haven't. Or at least somewhere in my head I've got stuck...

No, stuck isn't the right word. Experiences keep coming and coming and these fuel my thoughts and ideas. I'm wiser and try not to repeat mistakes. I say sorry when I know that I'm in the wrong. But the feeling I can't quite put my finger on...

I travel a lot by bus nowadays. It is mostly frequented by agile mothers, wrangling those pushchairs onto the bus and old people wrestling with themselves to get to a seat. I watch them and wonder whether they understand. One grey haired dame in a flowery skirt boarded with the grumpiest old git ever next to her. I looked from one to the other. Him with his scowl and hooded over eyes and her with a little smile and purple hair clips in her hair and I thought: Yeah, she would know.