A Different View
Getting a handle on the ageing process
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The maths may not be quite on the button but in round figures we seem to spend the first half of our lives trying to be older – and the second half trying to pretend we’re not as old as we are.
Think back to your first memories as a child, when an adult asked you what age you were.
“Three and a quarter,” might be the answer – and the quarter was critical because it lifted you above the level of the mere three years old.
Five and a half, six and three-quarters….all important quarterly dates on the road to another year.
Then you became a teenager and you lied with great extravagance – particularly when it came to getting into over-18 movies or getting served in pubs.
You can only look back now with mortification on the little tyke who had shaded in the bum fluff on their upper lip with a pencil – or, in our case, the brown phosphorous from the head of a match – to give the impression of greater growth in an area as devoid of it as the Sahara Desert.
So you wanted to be 18 from the time you were 14 – and then when you hit 18, you wanted to be 21.
But now you’ve arrived; once you look your age and can get into clubs without flashing your tattered passport, the world is a beautiful place for a while.
And then – just as you’re getting used to your perfect age profile – the big three-o comes bounding over the horizon.
But no matter….life is still good and you make jokes about thirty being the new twenty-one and you celebrate a little too forcefully which only serves to indicate that the tide is beginning to turn.
Still, you don’t have much time to deliberate on lying about your years because the chances are you have kids and a mortgage to pay for – crèche collects, football and/or ballet practise to pencil into the equation.
In other words, for these hectic years you’re too busy to worry about what age you are.
And yet the first roots are beginning to plant themselves – ironically often starting with the roots… the roots of your hair and a small drop of brown or black to keep the grey away.
You also don’t talk as much about age anymore; birthdays aren’t marked and your age is vaguely passed off as ‘in my thirties’.
Some celebrate being 40, if they’re surrounded by childhood friends who all know what age they are anyway – because they’re the same age – and it’s all a bit of crack but heading over the halfway line now and into the golden years.
The ladies tend to keep these things low key – and I can still remember a friend of mine in Athlone who surprised his shy and retiring wife on her fortieth by hiring their all-time favourite singer and booking a top restaurant for them and around 100 friends.
I can still see the look on her face when the surprise was sprung – and it was less thanks than pure thunder.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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