Something happened this weekend which was unsettling. And I don’t mean having a nasty dizzy turn for which there was no explanation. This other event had no explanation, in the sense that I didn’t know why it was unsettling, but I gradually realised that it was.
So what was ‘it’ you ask? Well it was a get together of people my age including some people that I went to school with, not that I recognised them. There’s a photograph I took of some of them above. I only took two photos as I didn’t want to be like the person at a gory road accident taking bad taste pictures of other people’s misfortune.
In theory these were my people they were more or less my age and looked it or possibly, dare I say it, even older. And more than that I was in my home town. I’ve told you before that when my mother died about ten years ago at the grand old age of 94, she left me her house in Heanor (the home town in question). For various reasons we never sold it and periodically we make the journey down the M1 and stay a few days (about all the travelling we do do apart from trips up to the barn / vineyard as I wrote about in my last blog).
So there we were this weekend in Heanor and we got invited to an old friend’s gig (I went to school and art college with him), as he called it. Turned out this was him singing solo to a group of his old climbing mates (they climb no longer) who also happened to be some old school chums. The one I chatted to had the nickname of Grabber and I have no idea why, certainly nothing risqué as far as I know at least. He did tell me that he fancied my mother and this was not the kind of thing I wanted to hear. He told me he was emigrating to Thailand as he had married a Thai woman and his cat had just died (so freeing him to travel) and he had a house there. Who’d have thought it Grabber in Thailand. Sounds like the title of a salacious novel.
Anyway I digress. The whole gathering was weird and as I say unsettling not helped by a long chat I had with the landlord (who was born above the pub although it wasn’t a pub then) about his having got Irish citizenship. This was a project both Mrs Summerhouse and I had toyed with but somehow never got round to. It did not help my fragile sense of self to be reminded of it.
And while on the topic of ‘fragile self’ looking at the gathered crowd didn’t help either. They were indisputably old – grey hair, stooped, a bit unsteady on their way to the toilet where they went often. They talked quite loud including when my old chum was singing which got them a severe rebuke from the man who stood up and recited poetry but forgot the words (more than one person did this). So old and forgetful who did that remind me of? I forget.
So the music didn’t help my sense of belonging either. It was what I used to call ‘finger in the ear’ music. You know ‘I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler’ Well f’ off and ramble then I used to think. Never my thing. I tried to join in by playing his mandolin but the frets were too small so I gave it up and with that my last chance of feeling a part of this sea of grey – my people, not.
And perhaps that’s all it was a failed chance to belong and an uncomfortable reminder of how old and decrepit I am. I suppose that it’s fair enough that such an experience should prove unsettling. And all in my own ‘home town’* which is unsettling enough even without all the supporting cast. OK, that’s enough unsettlement for now.
*Actually the gig was in Marlpool which is just next door to Heanor but every bit as unsettling.