The Age of Irrelephants

I’ve suddenly got to the age where I’m irrelevant. Shh. Don’t talk about it. Pretend it’s not happening. Getting old is a problem because it means you are closer to the elephant than ever. Gosh. That’s it. You’ve done it now. You’ve talked about death again. Don’t you know anything? You are not allowed to mention, or even think about dying. And people who are getting close to it shouldn’t be seen. Quick! Botox those wrinkles, stick some arse fat into your lips, dye your hair, and pretend that you are still young and relevant.

There is no reason for this picture, other than I like it.

I’ve also got to the age where I’m history. This is a shock. I remember my parents being equally shocked when my son told them that his primary school history topic was ‘The Sixties’. I laughed at them and said, it will be ‘The Eighties’ soon and everyone will be saying how interesting Chernobyl and leg warmers were. What happened? Did we miss out on ‘The Seventies’? Maybe, nothing happened, except one long hot summer and prog rock might be too difficult to study.

Last night I saw Blinded By The Light, a film about a boy’s love of Bruce Springsteen. I enjoyed it but when you lived through the era, you can’t help being surprised by some of the inaccuracies. I couldn’t believe that in 1980 his mate got a Chopper, which, even though it went out of production that year was supposed to be cool and he got a Rubik’s Cube, which, hardly anyone had yet and despite winning toy of the year was depicted as the not cool present. The Long Suffering Husband couldn’t believe that in 1988 he went off to University in a G-reg van.

The worrying thing is that I’m not history. If I live to the average age then I have another thirty years.  That’s a lot of life. It’s worse for women too. We can see old men. Old men don’t seem to remind us of our imminent death in the same way.

Kathy Burke has a wonderful, thought provoking documentary on Channel 4 at the moment called All Women. This week’s episode gave me a lightbulb moment. She said that the menopause is the most ***** up thing for women. She wasn’t really talking about what medics call menopause. She wasn’t saying that being a woman without periods and the ability to carry a baby was bad but she was saying that the transition to get to that stage was ridiculous. And it is but being a woman without periods and the ability to carry a baby is fantastic. The other side is brilliant. I’ve never had more energy, I can have loads of sex without worrying about getting pregnant and I can wear white trousers. None of these things are compulsory for us no longer fertile women but they are possible and it’s like being a man. The other side isn’t talked about very much. I guess that not so many women are actually getting there. Most of the treatments for menopause are actually about artificially fooling the body into thinking it is still fertile. The programme followed a woman who was having her eggs frozen and talked to the fertility doctor. She said that the root of all inequality is that men can have children forever and women can’t. She might be right but women being fertile forever isn’t really the solution I want. I feel some dystopian/utopian fiction coming on where men have to have vasectomies at 50.

The reason I started thinking about all of this is because Bake Off is coming back. The contestants have been announced and when I looked at them I suddenly felt old. Baking experts were traditionally your Nanna. Women who were no longer fertile, who had a bit of time and energy on their hands. Obviously, they couldn’t go to work, or run the country or anything sensible like that because the skills of child rearing are universally unrecognised and definitely not transferable (this should be sarcasm). So, they became experts at the things they were allowed to do. They baked and sewed and knitted and (for this generation) looked after the grandchildren. Suddenly, though, people (and especially TV) has realised that these grandma pastimes are fun and young people want in. When Bake Off first started, the post retirement 70+ bakers were missing, understandably, because no one wants to see anyone on TV that might remind you that death is approaching - and let’s be honest, that’s why Mary Berry had to go too. However, there were still a good number of Nanny-bakers. This year the oldest person is a 56 year old man and the oldest woman is 40. This makes me think that people only want to see fertility on TV, which does explain why all the slurping on Love Island is so popular.

So, despite the fact that I will probably live another thirty years I have reached the age of irrelephants. The age, where we don’t mention my lack of fertility and pretend that I have no use in life. Well, as Kathy Burke would say, fuck that!