IAIN STIRLING
And that’s another problem with this social-media thing. It’s not just footballers or YouTubers, now everyone succeeds so young. You go and watch something like Britain’s Got Talent, and there’s a 17-year-old saying, ‘This is my last shot now.’ What you are talking about? You’re 17. You’ve got a young person’s railcard for another 10 years. You’re fine. The rush to get there almost comes down to that Instagram thing of ‘What’s the point in winning an Oscar when you’re 40 because you won’t even look good in a selfie?’
SPENCER OWEN
I’d much rather win an Oscar at 60.
IAIN STIRLING
Oh, mate.
SPENCER OWEN
Cos if you win it at 20 you’ve been to the moon. Where do you go?
AGE-WISE, WE’RE ALL IN THE ‘SHIT BIT’
In the same way that Spencer had the support of his dad, having a family around me is actually the main thing that has saved me from the fear of growing old and becoming an adult doomed to spend my life sitting on a couch in comfy slippers while struggling to understand technology. I look at my family at their different stages of life and realise that it’s not all bad. The beginning of life is great, we all know. Being properly young, not having a care in the world and more importantly having parents who are literally there to serve you from dawn till dusk. They read books that you tell them to sing to you. Sing! Grown adults have to learn songs and perform them to you like you’re a Roman emperor. A mini Roman emperor who could at any point shit himself.
Parents have a legal obligation to look after you, no matter what you do. That’s mad if you think about it. At the age of three you could just go about sticking marbles up your bum and some fully grown adult would have to say, ‘Well, I guess that’s our day spent sorting out the marble situation, then.’ If I had fully comprehended that notion as a kid I would have stuffed so much stuff up my bum at every possible occasion. ‘It’s pieces of Lego today, Dad. Forget the NHS, I think it’ll be worth going private because this will be happening a lot. And if you do nothing, the courts will get involved!’ For many millennials (particularly myself) this carries on long into your adult life. Well, maybe not the marbles thing – I’ve not done that in months now.
As great as being young is, there is a bit towards the end of life that I properly relish – being properly old, like nearly done, old. I can’t wait to get to the stage when I can go out in public with my family, say something horrific and then just turn to them and say, ‘Well, now that’s your problem.’ Go to the restaurant, scream something politically incorrect, turn to my son and say, ‘You go deal with that and I’ll stay here and finish off my Bolognese … I would probably tip the guy too – I was out of order!’ I love old people like that. Just no one left to impress. No picture that they need to pose for to get likes on Instagram. No boss to answer to. They can do what they like, to who they like, when they like – so long as it doesn’t involve too many stairs.
Despite all this freedom, however, what old people like to do is gardening and when they like to do it is 6 a.m. What is it with old people and getting up early? I know they say the early bird catches the worm but not when that bird has a Zimmer frame. Have a lie-in! What have you got to do that’s so urgent? ‘I need to send a letter.’ A letter? Do it in the afternoon or just don’t send a letter! Text your friend Karen and then press the snooze button. ‘Karen doesn’t know how to work her phone.’ OK, fine. Well, 6 a.m. it is then. Even if they do have an obsession with early rises and mundane tasks, there is still a madness that surrounds all pensioners, and for reasons that I believe become more clear as you read this book, I am so very drawn to it.
My gran was like that. Wonderful woman, all six foot two of her. Now, her height isn’t relevant to the narrative in any way whatsoever, but I think we’ll all agree it’s a lovely visual image to carry through this chapter – a tall, crazy, old, female version of me. Imagine me but taller, with a fetching grey perm – you are all very welcome. She wasn’t tied down by the rules of society; she didn’t have to go to dinner parties and pretend to be fine with the very obvious fact that Colin was getting way too much attention. Fuck you, Colin, you’re only three weeks old and already you’re pissing me off. As a little aside I got my friend to read this paragraph back for me just to see if perhaps me imagining my own gran telling a three-week-old infant to ‘fuck off’ was too harsh, especially given my previous in this area, and my friend simply replied: ‘Who the fuck calls their baby Colin?’
Anywho, the point is I always admired my gran’s general disregard for ‘the rules’. Sometimes it was adorable, such as the time she assumed that Postman Pat tinned spaghetti shapes were all shaped like different post offices in her local area, and sometimes it was funny in retrospect, like watching my mum chase Gran’s 1970 black Ford Fiesta down the street after Gran had kindly accepted my and my little sister’s request to ‘get driven to the shops in the boot’. That is panic. The point is she was bloody marvellous. Awful driver, though, but still – six foot two.
THE ANTIGUA FUCK-UP (PART I)
One of my fondest memories of my gran was around the time of my first break-up. My family and I were on holiday in Antigua. I was comfortably in my twenties. Some of you might think that’s weird, and I guess in some respects it was. I had my reasons, primarily the nasty break-up and being a mollycoddled millennial. My mother still felt the responsibility was solely on her shoulders to make sure her ‘little boy’s’ broken heart was mended. Oh, fuck off, Freud!
You never really forget that first break-up. It never leaves, always there in the back of your mind, incurable, sort of like the sadness version of herpes. Mums are the only people that can really help, in my experience. My mum, I mean. I’m not just roaming the streets screaming, ‘She left me!’ at any woman with a buggy. I tried to talk to my friends about it – that was a bloody disaster. They just stare at you helplessly, a blank expression etched onto their faces, like when someone’s farted in a lift and everyone is trying to look like it wasn’t them that did it. I mean, I couldn’t move for messages on Facebook and Twitter hoping I was all right and ‘if I needed anything just ask’. Now, I’m not saying those people’s concerns weren’t genuine, but I will say that, although undoubtedly worried for my wellbeing, they certainly weren’t willing to travel in order to demonstrate it. There was someone who would, however. Someone who would move mountains for her ‘little boy’, her little 26-year-old, mortgage-owning, law-degree-having little boy – Mummy.
So I’m on this holiday, and I’m fine, totally fine, don’t look at me like that, I’m fine. We were three days in to ‘the big holiday’, and unlike our Scottish holidays of old there wasn’t a caravan in sight; however, exactly like our Scottish holidays of old, there was rain … and lots of it. Nothing gets a mum down more than rain on the main holiday. They obsess over it, constantly mentioning home. ‘In Scotland it’s beautiful,’ Mum would remark while staring out the hotel window at the grey antigen sky, like a convict looking out through his cell bars. ‘Three days’ rain on the main holiday. I can’t believe it. I’m going to call Thomsons.’ Yeah, Mum, you do that. I’m sure there is some policy that covers entirely uncontrollable and unprecedented Caribbean drizzle. They’ll give us a full refund – they can claim the costs back from Mother Nature’s insurance policy.
In order to alleviate some of the pent-up cabin (relatively upmarket hotel) fever we decided to go on a family drive. Is there anything more relaxing than a family drive? Mum shouting at Dad for driving too close to one side of the road, Dad not speaking to Mum because it wasn’t until two hours into the drive she realised the map was the wrong way round, while the kids in the back are relentless with their constant stream of ‘Are we there yet?’ and ‘Iain pulled my hair again’, which for the record was an absolute fucking lie. The only person totally at peace in this tin can of pent-up passive–aggressive anger was my gran, who just sat in the middle seat knitting. Not a worry in the world. Just absolutely