As if in recompense for the implication that I may be over the hill, my daily browse of the UK newspapers leads me to believe that there's loads of life left.
Perhaps not for Phil Collins who, at 58, has said that he'll never drum again because he is suffering from a painful spine injury. Some, but not Our Kid, hope he'll never sing again either.
Yet, according to John Fordham, who is in his sixties, Jack deJohnette, jazz drummer supreme and in his seventies, "seems to be saving some of his most creative and eclectic playing for his senior years."
Then there's British saxophonist John Surman who's just released his "loosest and jazziest album in years."
Other musicians are making comebacks.
The Beatles, of course, have never actually gone way even though they split up nigh on 40 years ago and John Lennon and George Harrison have already departed this life. I doubt that there is anyone from my generation who cannot sing along With The Beatles (which was my second album purchase), and now with the release of all 13 albums, remastered, and a video game our offspring and theirs can rejoice in the sublime pleasure we have always had from their creativity.
I'm not so sure about the two remaining Bee Gees reforming for a series of gigs, but then I was never that enamoured with the faux falsetto of Robin Gibb. Still, it's not as if they need the money and if they can set female fans' hearts a-quiver, good on them I say.
I suppose I ought to say the same for John Lydon (aka Rotten) who has decided to tour PiL (Public Image Limited), the band he formed after the Sex Pistols imploded just over 30 years ago. Although I did get to know a few of the London pub rockers of the early- and mid-seventies and had great fun at their gigs, I was never sucked in to the music of the punk rockers who supplanted them. Perhaps I was already too old. Mind you, I did admire their do-it-yourself ethos.
Perhaps the greatest imponderable of the current popular music scene in the UK is the thought that vying for the top spot is Dame Vera Lynn* who, at 92, is a year older than my father. He is probably quite pleased to know that the 'Forces Sweetheart' of World War Two can still compete with the current crop of pop favourites.
I think another Dame, Judy Dench, now 74, deserves the last word, partly because, fine actress that she is, I find myself nodding in recognised agreement with her personal attitude rather than her roleplaying and figure that I now understand what growing old(er) is about.
"I hear myself saying things that I know old people say. Like when I want to ring up about something and I get that fucking recorded message which tells me to press one, two, three or four, and then you press four and there are two more recorded messages and YOU CANNOT TALK TO ANYBODY! It makes me absolutely mad."
What happens when she finally gets through and the operator realises to whom they're speaking?
"I don't give them a chance to comment. I just give them an absolute mouthful and ring off."
She chuckles.
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Update 13.9.09
This ad is in today's Sunday Post.
I showed it to 'Er Indoors and she said that she knew someone, the husband of a friend.It's a shame he died last week.
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*Stop Press
Dame Vera has reached No.1
