Tuesday 27 April 2010

Delusion

I went to King Street, Newtown the other day - a street close to Sydney University and therefore pretty much devoted to the young. Instead of feeling middle aged and out of place, I imagined I was one of them. Again yesterday at a theatre matinee (was it sacrilegious to go to the theatre on the Anzac Day holiday?) I put on my glasses and looked at the crowd of total wrecks in the foyer and imagined I wasn't anything to do with them.

Of course, it's the need for glasses that allows me to continue in my belief that I am still quite youthful. If I don't wear them, the world takes on the same hazy quality it had during my teenage years, which I spent smoking too much of the wrong types of things (although is there a right type of thing to smoke?) And when I look in the bathroom mirror without them, I could be any age - or, indeed anyone (although not yet anything - I can still distinguish a vaguely humanoid shape from a cupboard.)

Unlike me, my fellow audience members yesterday all seemed to have resigned themselves quite well to maturity. Most of the women - and the crowd was mostly female - had chopped off their hair and allowed themselves to grow quite stout. If that's what it takes to acknowledge you are ageing, I will never do it. And if I start to spread vastly, I intend to buy a whalebone corset. I shall not go wobbling into that good night - or only wobbling drunkenly in the mode of the man who wrote the original of that line (I may be wrong but it was Dylan Thomas, I think?)

5 comments:

  1. It was indeed Dylan Thomas wot wrong the original of that line, and several times too. The circulatory nature of Fashion must surely dictate that corsets make a comeback soon - and there must surely be enough whales again by now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I used to go out a fair bit in Newtown. Lots of nice original pubs. Never really liked it as a suburb though, too many students, smelly hippies and junkies for my liking. Bring back national service I say.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Do not go wobbling into that good night
    but rage, rage that your corset is far too tight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Quite right too. Put the whalebone corset on your head and allow your hair to grow every where else. It's my ambition.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gadjo - I shall contact Captain Ahab now and get him to pick me up a few spare ribs
    Worm - it seemed marginally less grotty than it used to be - without my glasses anyway.
    Gaw - pure genius
    Madame - I can only do one ambition at a time - and that blue hat to replace your yellow one seems a more attainable target, surely?

    ReplyDelete