! O L D F A R T H O O D

No, of course I don’t… I mean, who’d want to be a mere two scornful words in a stand-up comic’s patronising patter… ‘The other day, at the ticket office, there was this old fart in front of me…’ …just you wait, young man, until your sciatica, arthritis and rheumatism feel the cold and wet today; your toupée (always good for a visual laugh) has blown off, your dentures have just cracked into a plastic cleft palate, the battery’s just gone in your hearing aid, and you left your walking stick by your seat in the bus or tube in panic when you couldn’t find that place no longer there, where you used to spend a penny… and you’re hoping to clear up with that immigrant ticket clerk (not the best job for him, surely?) which of the wildly variant twelve fare systems would apply to the ticket to visit your married daughter, where you might or might not stay the night… no of course I don’t… but the camera, which never lies, has lost patience with me.. its expensive self-focus system registers ‘old fart’ – quite possibly uses some built-in stock image… and even if some prestigious occasion requires a photo credit and one goes to a ‘studio photographer’ of ever-increasing price, hoping they’ll catch some firmness of a feature, some line of wise concern, an eye betokening a life well lived, some profile signifying gravitas… but no…often now, I see my face above some article in an in-flight or a waiting-room magazine, read it in self-congratulation or self-disdain, think, I don’t remember writing that… then realise, it’s by some other identical old fart, grinning vacantly, ingratiatingly, shapeless of any feature, devoid of any mystery of shadow, hoping that the editor will remember these wise words of age.. but no… so here’s one old fart issuing another…