Increasing levels of sad old baggery constitute vast swathes of my personal life these days (wearing more navy, eschewing the notion of the waistband, discovering cocoa, stockpiling porridge, stopping dyeing my hair – although stopping dying, full stop, would actually be pretty good if it could be managed).
I have also taken to castigating “young people” (she says, making finger quote marks in the air as she says this sourly) about leaving their detritus in the streets (eg dropping litter, mainly in the form of fast food containers and drinks cans) even if it means (and it has, twice), having said rubbish picked up and shied at my head. Fortunately I am not yet so old that I cannot duck out of the way sharpish, simultaneously sticking out my tongue or using telling hand-gestures in a mature and civilised manner guaranteed to set a good example to all.
Thus, I have also started to pick the stuff up and bin it, even if this means taking it home to do so. And that’s another symptom of advancing years – mithering about bins. I know more than a few householders of a certain age who could give Christian Grey a run for his money in the obsessive/compulsive stakes with a bit of sadism towards unsuspecting refuse collectors thrown in. Fit to be tied, indeed.
So far I have not succumbed to trainspotting or caravanning or collecting scraps or some form of metal detecting, despite the appeal of those which involve uncovering vast hordes of treasure and the trousering of handsome finders’ fees.
However, the latest manifestation of my senior service to the community has been to take part with great enthusiasm in a bit of bird watching – from the comfort of my own home, I might add, rather than the cramped conditions in one of those chilly outdoor hides that actually involves physically going somewhere and doing something while wearing suitable clothing. Thank God for the invention of picture windows and plastic birdfeeders. And central heating.
Mine is not curtain twitching, because we don’t have any, a joy to our neighbours as you can imagine. It’s just twitching in a minor, amateur kind of way, without the kit and the over-zealous expression and the lifetime’s ambition to spot the increasingly rare, not to say almost extinct, lesser-polled Scottish Tory at 40 paces, or at all. I leave that to the eagle-eyed political pundits.
Instead, we have discovered RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. And just to show that age need not mean a complete time lapse into nostalgia, we used an App. All by ourselves, with no children/grandkids in the house to show us how. We did!
It was very exciting and, as one of my ancient relatives used to say happily when discussing everything that was wrong with the “younger generation” (there go those finger quote marks again) , very “modren.”
Human nature will out, however. I dredged from the back of the bookshelf my ancient (1965) and dog-eared copy of the Observer Book of Birds (if a Book of Birds can technically be dog-eared) and proceeded to rifle through it eagerly in search of any phantom avian visitor I couldn’t immediately identify. As befits its owner, this slim, pocket-sized volume is so venerable that most of its illustrations are in black and white. And they’re drawings, not photographs. I didn’t care. I was on a roll, in spite of being neither slim nor pocket-sized.
We totted up 13 different bird types, I think, from a single tree creeper and solo goldfinch to a proper stooshie of speugs and a kestrel that flew over at the very last minute. Boy, was I chuffed (or should that be choughed? Or chaffinched?). Somehow it became a compliment to me personally that these colonisers of the air had settled upon my garden rather than any other, as if we lived in splendid isolation rather than a suburban street.
It’s like when someone admires your cat and you somehow take this as a great personal achievement.
At least with kids, you’ve had something to do with their production and character formation. Cats come with characters already formed and woe betide anyone who tries to change this. Although as a long-time cat sap turned born-again birdlover, I reckon that getting a bell on the tabby wanderer (somehow) just about allows the two species to co-exist relatively incident-free.
All this watching of the skies also improves community relations, too, I can exclusively reveal.
After all, how else could you spend many a happy hour over the garden wall discussing each other’s fat balls without getting a clip round the ear or a solicitor’s letter?