Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill
Read Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill Online
Authors: Gervase Phinn
Out of the Woods but not Over the Hill
Gervase Phinn
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Gervase Phinn 2010
Illustrations © Jim Kay
The right of Gervase Phinn to be identified as the Author of the Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher,
nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it
is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Epub ISBN 9781848949294
Book ISBN 9781444705386
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For my mother and father, Pat and
Jimmy Phinn, who encouraged me to
aim for the moon.
Contents
‘Don’t You Have a Proper Job?’
‘The Happiest Days of Your Life’
Introduction
When my son Richard and his fiancée were planning their wedding, they asked me if I would write a poem for this special occasion; something about love and families, a verse which was both touching and maybe a little sentimental. They would then have it framed as a reminder of the day they tied the knot.
Picture the scene: the happy couple sitting in the centre of the top table with the parents of the bride and groom, the two best men (my other sons, Matthew and Dominic) and the three pretty bridesmaids. Following the usual speeches, I was called upon to stand and declaim my poem, especially written for the occasion. And here it is:
When I am Old!
When I’m old and I’m wrinkly, I shall not live alone
In a pensioner’s flat or an old people’s home,
Or take an apartment on some distant shore.
I’ll move in with my son and my daughter-in-law.
I’ll return all the joy that my son gave to me
When he sat as a child on his dear father’s knee.
He will welcome me willingly into his home
When I’m old and I’m wrinkly and all on my own.
I’ll spill coffee on the carpet, leave marks on the wall,
I’ll stagger home drunk and be sick in the hall.
I’ll sing really loudly and slam every door,
When I live with my son and my daughter-in-law.
I’ll rise from my bed in the late afternoon,
Throw the sheets on the floor and mess up my room.
I’ll play ear-splitting music well into the night,
Go down for a snack and leave on every light.
I’ll rest my old feet on the new leather chairs.
I’ll drape dirty underwear all down the stairs,
I’ll talk to my friends for hours on the phone
When I live with my son in his lovely new home.
I’ll come in from the garden with mud on my shoes,
Flop on the settee for my afternoon snooze,
Expect that my tea will be ready by four
When I live with my son and my daughter-in-law.
I’ll leave all the dishes piled up in the sink
And invite all my noisy friends round for a drink,
I’ll grumble and mumble, I’ll complain and I’ll moan
When I’m old and I’m wrinkly and all on my own.
I’ll watch television hour after hour,
I’ll not flush the toilet or wash out the shower.
Oh, bliss, what a future for me is in store
When I move in with my son and my daughter-in-law.
A month after the wedding, my son and daughter-in-law moved to Bermuda!
Like many other ‘oldies’ who are approaching their three score years and ten, I am feeling my age. You know you are growing old, they say, when everything aches and what doesn’t ache doesn’t work, you sit in a rocking chair and can’t make it work and you get wind playing cards. You know you are growing old when you have more hair in your ears than on your head, a dripping tap causes an uncontrollable urge and you look forward to a good night in. You help an old woman across the road and discover it’s your wife, someone compliments you on your crocodile shoes and you tell them that you’re in bare feet and your children look middle-aged. When I was approached by a bald, bent and wrinkled individual who informed me that I used to teach him, and another time when a small child in an infant school observed that, ‘when I’m twenty-one, you’ll probably be dead’, I really did feel my age.
The thing about growing old is that you become increasingly nostalgic, remembering ‘the good old days’ and inflicting your memories on the younger generation:
When I was a lad, I walked to school
In pouring rain and freezing sleet,
With satchel crammed with heavy books,
I trekked for miles with aching feet . . .
But I was happy!
When I was a lad, I shared a bed
In a room with bare boards on the floor.
No central heating, double glazing,
We didn’t even have a door . . .
But I was happy!
When I was a lad I had no toys,
Computers, TVs and the like.
You were thought to me a millionaire
If you owned a football or a bike . . .
But I was happy!
When I was a lad, food was scarce,
I licked the pattern off the plate.
We never saw an ice-cream cone,
A bag of sweets or a chocolate cake . . .
But I was happy!
When I was a lad, school was strict,
And teachers hit you with a cane
Just for speaking out in class.
I never opened my mouth again . . .
But I was happy!
I remember well that golden age,
The memories make me feel quite sad.
Why every day was a holiday,
In the good old days, when I was a lad.
More and more these days, I seem to be harking back to this ‘golden age’ when bobbies walked the beat, people stood up for the National Anthem in cinemas and ‘gay’ meant happy. There were no Chinese take-aways, fast food outlets or supermarkets, and milk was delivered in glass bottles. Cars had chokes, MOTs hadn’t been invented and there were no computers, sound systems or mobile phones. The television, when it arrived in 1959, was housed in an ugly wooden cabinet, had an eight-inch screen and showed black and white programmes. There were no sex scenes, bad language or gratuitous violence on the screen, and the actors kissed with their lips closed.
When I was young, my father handed his wage packet over to my mother every Friday. He didn’t have a credit card, rarely went out without wearing his trilby hat and never set foot on a golf course. We didn’t go to an ice rink or a bowling alley or travel abroad, and we never ‘ate out’. The family would sit down around the table at teatime. If we children didn’t clean our plates, there was no dessert and, when we had finished, we had to ask ‘to be excused’. I wore short trousers until I was eleven, always had ‘short back and sides’ at the barber’s and walked to school in sensible shoes.
Of course, there are certain benefits to getting old: you receive a pension, a bus pass, a senior railcard and a winter fuel allowance. You can get into the cinema half price and people help you with your heavy case. But the great advantage of being a ‘wrinkly’ is that you can express your feelings and opinions freely and as forcefully as you like, for, as Dr David Olivier, an expert on ageing, concludes: ‘age can bring people independence of thought. Older people are not afraid to be original.’
For my father’s generation, being in your sixties was considered old and there was little more to look forward to than a leisurely walk to the pub, a game of dominoes and then back home for a snooze in your favourite arm chair. A woman in her sixties settled for a quiet, uneventful life; she dressed modestly, recalled wistfully her youthful good looks and resigned herself to looking after the home. Not any more. Today’s oldies are not interested in growing old. They are more likely to spend their children’s inheritance enjoying life rather than brooding about retirement and slowing down. They may be ‘out of the woods’ but they are certainly not ‘over the hill’.
Considering myself just such an ‘oldie with attitude’, I have collected together a selection of my own reflections – social comment, autobiographical anecdotes, descriptions of the oddities of life, random observations and idiosyncratic musings – in which I look back over the years. In this book you will find me rattling on about childhood and schooldays, family life and the world of work, the English language and, of course, ‘God’s own country’, Yorkshire. My aim is primarily to entertain and amuse. Perhaps, though, I might occasionally manage to stimulate an emotion and provoke a reaction. In any event, I hope they give you some pleasure.
