Reasons to be cheerful ….. number 72 ……. bringing down the painting in the attic

Now, it’s less that have I got old, that is all too clear …… but it’s the increasing way I am reminded that I was born in the first half of the last century.

I was prepared for the winter payment allowance, the arrival of my old age pension, and of course my crinkly bus pass, along with the bits that ache a bit more every year, and that sneaky feeling that good music stopped sometime in the early 1970s.

And here I shall not indulge in those oft quoted comments by people that “you are as young as you feel”, and that “in my mind I am still 24”.

There are days when I awake to find that I have slept through the 10’clock news, and Newsnight, and I am trying to pick my way through the plot of some alternative comedy show which seems to rely heavily on swearing and references to Hollyoaks.

All these are a given, but it is the way that people in shops, and in the doctor’s surgery have started  calling me “luvvy”, and “dear”.

I can’t quite work out when this happened but all of a sudden it is the norm.

Setting aside the quite acceptable pleasantries that we all  use when talking to strangers, there is the sense that these words are reserved for me. 

This I know because I don’t hear the tall, bearded policemen paying at the till for a packet of chewing gum being called “dearie” or for that matter the man and the woman at the next checkout with their twin three olds receiving a double rendition of “love”.

Mercifully, I have yet to experience being talked to very slowly with the emphasis on certain words and for good measure a little louder than the conversation to be had with the three students ahead of me in the queue.

But I am sure it will happen.

And the historian in me wonders, if this has always been the case.

Did the ageing Florence Nightingale get called “my love” when ordering a fancy cake in a posh London café, and at what point did the Sergeant of Arms refer to Barbara Castle as “ducks” ?

Or are all these expressions confined to certain situations and places.

Of course, for most people through most of time, old age was not an issue, because for many life expectancy was  short, and for those who did make it to what was pension age there will have been a class divide.  

For the wealthy and comfortably well off subservience from trades people and staff was still to be expected, while for the working class and especially those forced by poverty into charitable institutions or the workhouse theirs may well have been a harsher environment where “dearie” and “ducks” gave way less affectionate forms of address.

So I am left pondering on my next visit to the shops, which may see new variations of the luvvy and dear, which if it continues will be force me to bring down the painting from the attic, if only to prove that there is youth in me yet.

Pictures, campaigning badge for pensioners, circa 1979, and me