THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE... AND OTHER SHORT STORIES
A Brief History of the Middle Ages By Stuart McCullough THERE’S no getting around it. Not even with a Melways, a torch and sturdy pair of hiking boots. It’s just too big. Better, then, to take a deep breath and admit it outright – middle age has well and truly arrived and there is nothing left to do but to embrace it in all it’s tea-sipping, slipper-wearing, youth-pitying glory than to deny it. I’ll admit I was slow to realize. One moment, you’re an edgy, fashion-busting, envelopepushing bona-fide young person surfing the counterculture wave with the utmost of ease. Then, almost overnight, you’re stuck in middle age and yelling at the television. Not that there weren’t warning signs. I should have realized sooner. In particular, I should have realized once I no longer considered talk back radio to be a horrifying congregation of malcontented freaks that I stumbled across accidentally when attempting to move between 3RRR and PBS and, instead, considered it essential listening in order to remain informed, that something had changed. In fact, feeling that I need to be informed at all times is definitely a warning sign I chose to ignore. When I talk about vinyl, it’s not a reference to an item of clothing. Short of wearing lycra, talking about vinyl is the single-most middle aged thing anyone can do. I bang on about which albums I own and kid myself by thinking that by collecting shelves of the stuff I’m off the grid and sticking it to Apple Music. This is despite the fact that I grew up in a generation that
bought cassette tapes with ‘Dolby’ sound or whatever else they used to make it sound better when, really, they should have created something to stop it getting chewed up by your car stereo. It was our parents who collected vinyl, not us. We were the generation that treated the compact disc as though it would last forever. Which it will, only in the shed instead of the house. Despite this, we now bang on about vinyl and sound quality even though our hearing is completely cactus as a result of listening to Alice In Chains and Kyuss albums at an obscene volume. Which brings me to my next point – I know that I’m middle aged because I now claim that my generation had the greatest music of any generation.
That it is vastly superior to the horrific assault on the senses that passes for music these days and which – to my ears - all sounds the same because it’s been churned through the same computer program. But memory is such a selective thing. When I talk about the great music I listened to growing up, I’m thinking of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, You Am I and the Fauves. I’m ignoring, however, that the nineties were also the era of boy bands, Britney and Celine Dion’s unholy zenith. It’s more than merely selective, it’s borderline dishonest. I no longer know what the inside of a nightclub looks like. I’m going to assume that nothing much has changed and that they remain the same wretched sinkholes of humanity
they always were. I long thought that hell is a nightclub where interminable sets by under-achieving covers bands are punctuated by blasts of ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell and drink cards. It’s not just the idea of going out that doesn’t appeal to me, it’s that the prospect of staying up late will do irreparable damage to my sleep schedule and I may never recover. Medical appointments were once something that occurred with the frequency of Halley’s comet. Now I know the reception staff by name and am earning plenty of the medical equivalent of frequent flyer points. Leonard Cohen once sang about aching in the places he used to play. For me, my body is now in open rebellion against me and there’s very little I can
do about it. I am starting to accept bulges that I have previously regarded as a temporary result of a spectacular Christmas as permanent. This is the equivalent of finally accepting that the dodgy extension some hack built is probably part of the house. Perhaps most damning of all – I have started to use the term ‘young people’. Specifically, I’ve started to use the term ‘young people’ as a reference to a group of which I am no longer a part. It’s mutual too. Although I’m yet to have a seat offered to me on public transport by someone wearing a school uniform who is not Angus Young from AC/DC, that day is surely drawing ever closer. Next week, I have tickets to see a band. I’m already worried about whether I’ll be able to stay up late enough and how I’m going to recover from a lack of sleep in time to return to work. Even now, I’m thinking about where I’ll park the car and how the dog will react when we return late. As luck would have it, I’m seeing Augie March. They were big in the nineties and I have several of the albums on vinyl. It’s nothing to be afraid of. Not yet, anyway. As Generation X hurtles onwards, it’s inevitable that we’ll discover sorts of things about ageing that our parents already know, probably told us and we roundly ignored. But that’s alright. Each generation’s journey is it’s own. Now having said all that, I think I might make myself a cup of tea and have a lie down. stuart@stuartmccullough.com
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Frankston Times 14 May 2018
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