A case for Gemini, Google's man-living-in-a-barrel who loves tough questions. In fact I belong to 0.6% of the UK population which sounds tidgy enough to be rather special. Alas, when the percentage is re-stated in numerals I find myself one out of 625,000 souls and thus quite commonplace. Small confession: given my age I prefer to be called a "soul" rather than the fleshy, baggy collection of friable bones that is reality.
Two decades earlier I'd have been a rarer voter; UK nonagenarians have doubled in numbers since then.
I'm older than the tiny band of faithfuls who read Tone Deaf, so, what's it like being four-score years and ten (actually eleven)? Ignore the obvious stuff which I won't go into: forgetfulness, a corporeal structure which groans and creaks, a growing impatience with those who use language carelessly, diminished enthusiasm for cheap wine, a lack of interest in gardening that has expanded into a hatred... you can guess at all that.
But how about a more appreciative response to aspects of beauty in older women? Is this somehow crass, or anti-feminist? I hope not. What I see is calmer, less blatant. As a twentieth-century Shakespeare might have said: these gliding, more detached adults wear their rue with a difference. The problem - for me - lies in articulating any such observation. Thus - you're not going to believe this! - I am uncharacteristically silent.
I may not walk as I once did, without concentration. The likelihood of tripping is greater and the penalties more destructive. Sometimes it's as if I'm on a tight rope. Children overtake me. Men and women at doors, a long way off, see me coming and wait - often inordinately - holding the door open. I murmur my thanks and think: lento.
I have developed an insane desire for made-up potato salad. Faced with a choice I would prefer it to lobster, previously the height of gastronomic indulgence. Thank God it's cheap.
I have a foolish, utterly unjustified, belief I can speak mathematics. That equations are poetic. That I can terrify my liberal arts acquaintances with my knowledge. As with James Thurber: people often just walk away.
Death has become a neighbour. The sort that takes in one's undelivered parcel. Points out tomorrow's garbage collection day. Brings round a sponge cake still warm from the oven. Smiles and brushes away thanks with the least demonstrative of hand gestures.
My writing is, I think, more ambitious.
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