60, just another milestone on the road to advanced codgerdom

Yesterday, as I turned 60, one of Eliot’s verses from his desolate love song came unbidden to my flaking consciousness.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

Being of stout Glaswegian stock, dilemmas on whether or not to eat the furry, stalwart berry are a rare circumstance. And you first must actually possess a significant quantum of follicles to worry about parting outcomes. At 60, the prospect of walking on a beach in white flannel trousers would signify a degree of carefree indolence.

Lately though, I’ve found myself wandering directionless and unaccompanied in garden centres while pondering the purchase of hanging baskets. I fall in quietly and without fuss behind cyclists, when once I would roar up behind them, cursing their sweaty sanctimony.

I see other men of similar age sporting short trousers at the first hint of sunshine and worry if I too look ridiculous in them. “I shall not wear white flannel shorts on the street or upon the beach.”

The other week I read an article by a style guru who suggested that men who insisted on wearing jeans beyond the age of about 35 should simply cut it out. It’s begun to induce sleeplessness. Do black ones count? On my recent week’s leave I held back all planned social engagements until after the end of Bargain Hunt.

The sense of regret at missed opportunities caused by inertia and social embarrassment has lately begun to stalk me. Once, I could happily ignore those lifestyle questionnaires that the weekend supplements routinely carry. Yet, only last week I began mentally formulating one of those “messages to my 18-year-old self”.

I started off with “Don’t falsely claim to have run the Glasgow Marathon in your first job interview. At least not without first considering the possibility that your interrogator might invite you to join him in a sponsored 10k for his firm’s chosen charity.”

Last week, I bitterly regretted attempting to complete one of those questionnaires about diet and exercise. It had told me that a score of 100 or more for 20 questions was concerning and that I needed seriously to “address my lifestyle choices”. I was on 90 after ten. And when I glimpsed the rest of them I saw words and phrases like “yoghurt”, “meditation” and “work/life balance”. It seemed pointless to proceed further.

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The tyranny of the lifestyle coach seems designed to drive you into the arms of therapy. I’m convinced that practitioners in these two gaseous sectors are partners in a lucrative sting. Your mindfulness guru induces such a state of panic at what you’ve become after several decades of mindlessness that you’re compelled to seek counselling. They target men over 50, knowing that this dishevelled cohort are already beginning to fret about the consequences of their bad choices. We’ve been instructed to develop passions for stuff: perhaps to get involved in activities connected to your politics; your faith or your favourite sport. But there’s not been much solace for me there either. If I’m not disappointing them, they’re disappointing me … veering towards the former.

I’m bad at causes. After a brisk start the ardour fades and all the red lines start fading to grey.

Kevin McKenna in his days with Lennoxtown Boys Club under 12s. He is second from the right in the back row. (Image: Kevin McKenna)

I’m a supporter of Scottish independence, but a very bad one. I’m still, at heart, a persistent Anglophile to the extent that if Scotland were never to gain its independence it wouldn’t cause me any angst. There are a lot worse countries than England with whom to be shacked up.

As a Catholic I’m probably at the Presbyterian end of the Roman spectrum and have lately come to admire the sleeves-up, no-nonsense approach of the Free Kirk. I’ve also lately displayed atheistic tendencies in my devotion to Celtic FC. What if Inverness were to win the Scottish Cup on Saturday? Would it really be so bad? I’ve not even had the refuge of a traditional, mid-life crisis. How can you be, when you proceed under the delusion that mid-life is still several years away? I blame the fake elixirs of eternal youth that we’re all being offered.

Once, the adverts and glossy magazines were full of athletic, attractive young people all engaged in athletic, attractive, young pursuits. Advancing codgerdom could be negotiated without any unrealistic images of septuagenarian vigour giving rise to false expectations.

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What strikes you about images from the immediate post-war era is how men in their 40s and 50s looked and how they dressed. It’s now commonly held that these chaps look “old before their time”. No they don’t. They just look like how men in their 40s and 50s ought to have looked. And they seem content with their lot and free from the pressures of doing half-marathons or charity treks up yon Mount Kilimanjaro. In the 21st century though, these spaces have been invaded by springy old people jouking up hills and swimming with dolphins.

Last week, the Sunday Post had a picture of an 80-year-old bloke on the front page who looked like me when I was 21, only fitter. And yet, as I embark on my seventh decade, every day is a bonus. Eight years ago, almost to the day, I suffered a heart attack at 30,000 feet, en route to Australia. Looking back on it, my immediate lifestyle choices were perhaps unwise. Not ever having previously encountered a cardiac episode, I dismissed it merely as a touch of anxiety or that deep-vein thrombosis. A large Bacardi and a couple of cigarettes would calm me down.

My Australian consultant was none too impressed. And so now my Bacardis are laden with orange slices and I’ve reduced my cigarette intake by two a year since.

And besides, I live in Scotland and I woke yesterday morning, bearing no ill will to any single soul on the planet. So, here’s to the next few years/months/days (if I’m spared).