The media these days seems to be full of stories about TV shows I’ve never watched, never even heard of in some cases, and people I’ve likewise never heard of and never seem to find out exactly why the media thinks that I should have heard of them. Time was that I had my finger on the pulse of popular culture, or so it seemed, I watched inordinate amounts of new TV shows and knew who everyone in them was, (the advent of the internet helped immeasurably there). But as time went on, I found that I was enjoying large amounts of it less and less. Gradually, my feeling of obligation to watch all of this stuff so as to know what my workmates and friends were talking about started to wane. Increasingly, I switched my viewing allegiances to my true love – the offbeat, the obscure, the low rent, the vintage and the weird side of the media. Which, at first, meant tracking down out of print VHS tapes and later DVDs and watching late night TV schedules for random screenings of this sort of stuff. The internet and then streaming TV has made finding this stuff far easier, but there are still gaps to be filled in my viewing experience. Of course, the downside of giving in to my passions was that I couldn’t find anyone else remotely interested in the same sort of stuff to discuss it all with: strangely, exploitation films don’t make for the sort of ‘water cooler’ discussions at work that soap operas or reality TV does. But again, the internet has helped here, bringing me into contact with kindred spirits and providing me with somewhere to write about it all.

What all of this is leading to is the question of whether this increasing detachment from current pop culture means that I’m getting old? It’s a subject that’s been preoccupying me somewhat of late – I’ve recently been referred to as ‘old’ by others, despite the fact that a) I’m certainly not old – I still fall well within the parameters of ‘middle age’, b) I don’t think that I actually look old, (sure, the receding hairline doesn’t help, but is balanced by the relative lack of greyness in most of what’s left) and c) I certainly don’t feel old. I guess I’ve reached that age where it is somewhat startling to find that it isn’t just kids who regard you, in relative terms, as being ‘old’, but also some adults. Having said that I don’t feel old, my increasing preoccupation with things past is, perhaps, part of a subconscious acknowledgement that my past is now longer than my future, (although life expectancies are increased these days and the fact that my mother is still going strong in her nineties and on my father’s side, I had an aunt who lived to be a hundred and one, gives me hope of many more good years).

I suppose the fact that, for a while now, I’ve been effectively retired from work, (thanks to a financial windfall from the endowment policy paying out when I paid off the mortgage on my house a few years ago, plus the prospect of some upcoming work pensions paying out), doesn’t help with others’ perceptions of my age. The fact is though, that even if I am semi-retired, (as I prefer to style my situation, as I don’t rule out going back to some kind of paid work), it’s an early retirement, (they used to be quite fashionable for us public sector workers). While, in spite of my advancing years, I still don’t feel particularly aged, others seem to think differently: the other day I had through my letterbox another invitation to sell my house and move to a new, totally anonymous, retirement flat. Worse still, it was accompanied by another piece of junk mail about planning my funeral. For fuck’s sake – I haven’t even started drawing a pension yet! I’ve still got some way to go yet before I qualify as an OAP. (Although, as mentioned, I do have a couple of work pensions from previous jobs which will start paying out next year).

A couple of months ago I had one of those jarring experiences where someone younger seemed to think that I was old and confused and in need of their assistance, (I wasn’t, I was merely trying to shake all of the junk mail out of a copy of The Guardian in Tesco, before I bought it). I refrained from telling them to ‘fuck off you patronising cunt’ and instead simply stared them out. I really don’t know where they were coming from – like I said, I don’t look particularly old. Sure, as already noted, my hair is thinned with a bit more grey encroaching these days, but they couldn’t have judged me from that as I was wearing a hat at the time. (What does make me look old, though, is when I’m foolish enough to grow a moustache and/or beard – in my youth they’d be red, but nowadays they come out grey, making me look like Methuselah’s older brother).

Unfortunately, though, the young have this idea that anyone more than a couple of years older than them is utterly decrepit. Teenage girls are the worst – I once overheard one describing me as an ‘old person’ simply because I wasn’t walking as quickly as them. (One thing age does teach one, I’ve found, is to slow down a bit and actually enjoy the world around you – we’re all heading to the same destination eventually, why hurry?). Obviously, all of this has left me deeply taumatised to the extent that I’ll have to retreat to the parlour, put on my dressing gown and slippers and settle down with a hot cup of cocoa to watch an episode of Midsomer Murders...

Doc Sleaze