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FIFTY...NOT OUT
by Steve Ward
Decline and Fall
Boris Johnson. Now there’s a name to
conjure with. He’s one of those people
who has a whole army of haters, yet
somehow manages to float above it all
with his amiable and eccentric persona.
He could have come straight out of the
pages of a PG Wodehouse novel as the
daft uncle. The whole buffoon thing is
almost certainly an act though, because if
you catch sight and sound of him in a
more serious moment, he’s clearly got a
very sharp mind. That act hasn’t done him
any harm at all though in his inexorable
rise up the various ladders he climbs -
journalist, politician, TV personality.
Anyway, all that is by way of introduction
to some thoughts about the getting old,
and the birth of a wonderful new phrase
to accompany the process. We’ve got
another diversion to go round first though.
Boris, or BoJo as certain people have
dubbed him, got himself into trouble a few
years ago for writing that the inhabitants
of the city of Liverpool liked to wallow in
misery. He added that they seemed to
actually encourage and enjoy anything
that allowed themselves to be portrayed
as victims. And if that sense of victimisation
put them at odds with the rest of the
country, even better. There was nothing
they liked more than a touch of onedownsmanship
As contemporary evidence of what Boris
was getting at, witness the recent furore
over Luis Suarez’s racist remarks to
Patrice Evra. The incomprehensible
Scotsman, King Kenny Dalglish, stirred
the pot by refusing to apologise, sticking
by his man and invoking the old ‘everyone
hates us’ attitude to which Boris had
referred a decade earlier. At least,
Dalglish refused to say sorry until the
American owners of Liverpool Football
Club wrote an apology for him. You just
knew it wasn’t all his own work because it
was in coherent English and didn’t speak
to the reader as if he was an idiot. Let’s
be clear - in Liverpool he may be King
Kenny, but the rest of the country thinks
he’s a complete tit.
At about the same time as King Kenny
was making a fool of himself, a number of
old cabinet papers from Margaret
Thatcher’s years at the helm were
released under the 30 year rule. One of
the more interesting items recorded
Geoffrey Howe’s opinion that Liverpool
was a decaying mess and full of such
ghastly and unemployable people that it
should be subjected to ‘managed decline’.
And it’s here that admiration grew towards
Maggie’s chancellor for inventing such a
wonderful phrase. Managed decline.
So now that the city has served as an
introduction to this month’s theme of managed
decline, we’ll leave behind Liverpool
and all the scussies who sail in her. That’s
because from now on the phrase managed
decline will be used to describe the
way some of us handle the aging
process.
We start off as super fit teenagers, and
even into our twenties we’re completely
indestructible and are going to live forever
at exactly the same pace. Then, by the
time we reach our thirties, little things are
starting to be less robust. We’ve put on a
few pounds. The hair has started to thin a
bit. Hangovers appear for the first time.
We note all these things, but by and large
ignore them. Reality has still not taken a
firm hold on our expectations.
Our forties are where things change more
significantly. The few pounds have
become a revolting spare tyre, the thinning
hair a full-on bald patch, and hangovers
last all day. By now it has also started
to dawn on us that we’re not getting
any younger. We begin to realise that
these ailments and physical defects will
never get any better unless we do something
about them. We might half-heartedly
attempt to diet. The bald patch disappears
into a fully shaved head, and alcohol consumption
is moderated. Do you see
what’s happening here? We’ve started to
manage the decline of our own bodies.
As middle age progresses, so various
joints start to hurt more, especially those
of us who’ve played any sport. Most of us
drop the pretence that we will ever get
into 32” trousers again and buy larger
ones. We start to take vitamin pills and
exercise a bit. By now, the decline is very
definitely being managed by those who
have some pride in themselves, and it’s
taking up a lot of effort.
But there are others who will not bother.
They will shrug their shoulders, say ‘what
can you do?’ and allow themselves to slip
into something that is much closer to a
gradual decay into old age than it is a
consciously managed decline.
Then there will be one final set of people
that, as they get older, care not for the
application involved in a managed
decline. They don’t even have enough
pride to do the gradual decay thing. No,
they take an active role in hastening the
process. Pies? Bring ‘em on. Booze?
Loads please. Exercise? What the feck’s
that?
We need a phrase to describe these people
as succinctly and wonderfully as managed
decline or even gradual decay does.
How about wilful destruction?
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