An urban myth runs that Dylan Thomas spent so much of his life drinking himself into a stupor at Brown’s Hotel in Laugharne, South Wales, that he would give its telephone number as his own for people who wanted to contact him.
He wrote rather more beautiful things than he lived beautifully, and famously petered out into death in a New York hospital (of pneumonia, sort of) in 1953.
Six years before that, he wrote his extraordinary anthem in opposition to fading away gently, Rage against the dying of the Light, as part of a commission for the BBC. If you have 100 seconds to spare, you might enjoy watching him reading it himself. If you don’t enjoy it, you need a drink.
Now, for a man who died at the grand old age of 39, you might think that he had a bit of cheek advising all of us ‘not to go gentle into that good night’, but his words have always had a deep resonance for me, especially when I remember how old I am going to be one day quite soon.
The process of ageing, if you are lucky, brings physical decline long before the brain falls apart. In a way we count on this, else how could we maintain the image of wisdom while we dispense unwanted advice to unhearing children.
After a time, it becomes a balancing act between abjectly surrendering to the spreading growth rings within you, on the one hand, and making some pathetic attempt to look young by pretending to be edgy, on the other. If ‘0’ is the extreme version of the former, and ‘100’ the latter, I am on about 68. I have an occasional beard and swear more than I should, but at least I don’t say ‘LOL’ or wear trainers to work.
No, for me, the transition into old age is very much wrapped up in who you choose as your role models. Set the bar too high (say George Clooney) and you are fated to a life of misery; get it nice and low and you never know, it may just work. Here are a few of mine.
In the question of alcohol consumption, Dylan Thomas, of course. However bad I have been on a really bad day, it wouldn’t come close to the eye-watering bath-fulls he managed on a day of near abstention. I can look my doctor in the eye and say, with some honesty, ‘in moderation’.
In the question of physical fitness, Boris Johnson. I may look a joke as I chase the ball round the park at cricket, or try to carry old railway sleepers to dismantle the raised beds but, compared to him, I feel I am a God.
In matters of citizenship, Sir Philip Green is my lodestar. The refreshing sight of him lounging on the back of his £115 million yacht in Monaco as a grateful nation pays his company’s furlough scheme bill, ensures that I go to sleep each evening with the feeling of a job well done, and a nation adequately served.
In delicately judging whether my opinions are wanted or not, I hang the yardstick off Nigel Farage and in the actual framing of those opinions, Donald Trump. For sensitivity, Jeremy Clarkson, and for the instinctive understanding that I may be supervising a shit-show after all, his fellow Jeremy, Corbyn. For an optimistic take on the events of my day, Laura Kuennsberg guides my ship.
In the matter of being annoying just by being who I am, I am Jeremy Vine, and for knowing when to shut up, well, it’s probably me, to be honest.
‘Old age should burn and rage at close of day’, said the Bard of the Boat House, and he had more of a point than he perhaps knew.
I just hope that he found someone in Laugharne who actually drunk more than he did to be role model. It would have brought him great happiness.
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