GETTING OLD

Do you remember the Billy Connolly sketch when he recounts finding his first grey pubic hair? He's appalled to realize middle age has crept up on him unnoticed.

Today I had my Billy Connolly moment...
This is Marcel when he was Léon's age. In my mind, when Marcel isn't standing beside me towering over me, I still think of Marcel as being a little boy like this. It was, after all, only a few weeks ago, on my time scale, that I gave birth to him.
Today I was sitting in the car driving with Marcel, Anna and Amaia to ASDA when I stopped at the traffic lights on the Eaglesham road. For the first time in about two weeks the sun was bright in the sky. I was in the driver's seat, Marcel was on my left, the sun was on his left.
As I looked to my left to see if the filter arrow had come on on the traffic light the sun lit up his face, and I noticed in horror that the sun was illuminating what can only be described as a definite moustache of blond fluff on my 'baby'! Oh my God, I'm getting old!

I KNOW HOW THEY FEEL!

zootrip
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I'm beginning to think this Life begins at 40 is a load of nonsense. I found my first ever grey hair a couple of weeks after I turned 40, and last week I found a second one. Then today I had an eye test and was told I could use some glasses for reading, though my distance vision is perfect. God, I'll be needing a hip replacement any day at this rate! Humph...

IT'S A QUESTION OF AGE

A matter of record: vinyl magic - soulful 45's
Originally uploaded by rigilbert

When I look at a single - you know a vinyl 45 - (apologies to all under 25s who don't know what I am talking about), I think of it as something small - because I know lps, in fact I am even old enough to have seen my grandparents' 78s. Today while unpacking, I came across a very old pile of ABBA singles from the 70s. I left them in a pile on the living room floor. Charlotte came upon them later in the day and exclaimed in a mix of horror and shock - those cds are enormous! She didn't even really know what they were! I guess I am now well and truly one of yesterday's generation.

FEELING OLD - A PHYL'S BLOG LEITMOTIF? WHAT AGAIN????

I was driving home from work the other day listening to radio 2. Now up till a few months ago I listened mainly to radio 4 or radio Scotland for the book programme, or politics or whatever, so to find myself tuned into radio 2 shocked me in itself - oh my god I chose to put on radio 2 - that's what middle-aged parents listen to, not young people like me :-\ Oh shit, I am getting old!!! Worse still they were playing Gary Numan on radio 2. If Gary's made it onto radio 2, I really am old! When I was a teenager clinging on to my beloved ABBA, my more daring contemporaries were turning to punk and the likes of Gary Numan but now Gary's so tame he's on radio 2! Where does life go in such a hurry? I must ring my old schoolmate Fiona Campbell (who wanted to marry Gary when she was 14!) and tell her they're playing Gary on radio 2, she'll be devastated! He was definitely a radio 1 guy in my day. Anyway Pudge didn't seem to mind, he was positively boogying out his seat to 'Are friends electric?' I must download him it for Xmas.

Oh...and while I may put up with Jeremy Vine or Steve Wright, I will certainly never be turning on radio 2 when that plonker (the politest term I could think of) Wogan is on.

ITS LONG-AWAITED RETURN

Since the day it closed in March 2003 I have been at a loose end. My very favourite place in all of Glasgow was dismantled, not before time of course as it was falling to pieces and had become a sorry sight, but still I suddenly had nowhere to sit on a rainy Saturday afternoon, or on a cold winter's day. When I lived in my beloved West End I spent most of my spare time in there. I'd read a book, take the kids for walks, stand and watch the fish and the ferns. I'd go to the breezy café and sit alone. Maternity leaves were fondly spent breastfeeding tiny babies in there away from the harsh Glasgow wind. I missed taking Léon there during my last maternity leave. In fact it is odd to think I have a child who has never been inside the Kibble palace. It will be interesting to see if Charlotte remembers it, having only been 3 when it closed its doors, though of course she had spent forever inside it before then. Happily, today, St Andrew's day saw it reopen to the public. At last :-) I for one will be through its doors before the week is out breathing a huge sigh of relief, with my camera round my neck and my kids in tow.

HOW QUICKLY THEY GROW

Today is Halloween. That is why baby Pudge is wearing a spider suit for his nursery Halloween party where he apparently enjoyed dooking for apples, a popular Scottish Halloween game, though the mind boggles as to how you make babies play it (and stay alive)! And Charlotte has been dressed as the ever-girlie Darth Vader all day, though, much to her disgust, the helmet wasn't allowed for school in case it frightened the younger kids (of which, of course, she is one!) - she even wanted to take along her voice changer! Marcel however isn't wearing a Halloween costume because apparently Halloween is 'for kids'. :-( So he turned up at school wearing only a T-shirt sporting a skeleton design.

FEELING OLD - A PHYL'S BLOG LEITMOTIF?

So I was driving into town with all 3 kids in the back of the car tonight. They asked me to put on the cd of High School Musical. 'Is that your favourite record at the moment guys?' I asked. Blank stares. 'Record?' 'Surely you have seen a record - you know like a big black cd?' I asked. 'No never', they both replied. Oh my God, how old am I? It is funny to think both my grandmothers died before ever hearing the word cd and yet my kids don't know records. My Granny even worked in a record shop when she wasn't playing piano in a night club! Anyway they eventually remembered they had once seen a record on an episode of Tom and Jerry. When were they made? 1950s?

Oh and Tom and Jerry itself is an odd one. Everyone in the world knows they are both boys but my kids insist and have done all their lives that Jerry is a girl. I thought that they were confusing with the name Geri, but no it is more cryptic than that! Being French bilingual they know it is un chat but une souris but the non-French part of their brains uses this information to assign gender, something a real monolingual French person would never do. How cool is that?

HAUD YER WHEESHT!

I was in a shop at the weekend that sold T-shirts with typically Scottish phrases printed on them. My kids' reaction to the T-shirts got me to thinking, with some nostalgia and some sadness, about quite how quickly language and meaning is lost. The first T-shirt said 'Haud yer wheesht' - instantly recognizable to me as Gramps used to say it to me often when I was a child in the 70s, so it was language I knew but didn't use. My parents, however, don't often use these old Scottish terms, and I, belonging to a generation on, never use them although am passively au fait with them all. They feel alien on my tongue but not in my head :-( The upshot of course being that my kids - born just 30 years after me in the same town, but, significantly, after the death of all of my grandparents didn't have any notion of what it meant - It was as foreign to them as it would be to any Englishman or foreign tourist :-( I tried a few more - for instance asking them if they knew what a 'clype' was, but no - blank stares - I must bring a Scot's Gem home from work and teach them these little gems before it is too late.

AGING IN THE NOUGHTIES

I was looking though some old family photos recently and I couldn't help but notice how much older people used to look 2 generations ago. Either that or I am in denial when I look in the mirror. Ok, I no longer pass for 25, but despite not spending my life caked in moisturiser or expensive creams that promise to get rid of the lines, I definitely think I'm a younger 38 than my grans were, or am I deluding myself??? See these photos taken when they were approximately 36.