The One Benefit of Growing Old.

I watched a YouTube video recently, of The Wailin Jennys performing a live set for CBC in Canada. I remembered having watched it before, around ten or eleven years ago before I became old and broken and a little worn around the edges, and I remembered I’d entered a comment in praise of their performance.

Now, one of the band – and the one I always found most ‘appealing’ – in those far off, halcyon days, was called Ruth Moody. She was an Australian who later went on to form a band of her own, and she was pretty dishy (to use a term sufficiently archaic as to be more amusing than offensive.) In this particular piece, each of the combo was both singing and also playing an instrument. Ruth was playing the bodhran, and doing so very well. I read the comment I’d left back in whatever year it was and it made particular reference to Ruth’s playing of the bodhran. I wrote:

If she can play the bodhran that well, imagine what she could do with a piece of wood and a pot of almond paste.

It confused me. I couldn’t imagine what I could possibly have meant by it, and yet somebody had replied with:

That’s one of the best comments I’ve ever read on YouTube. Love it! And I agree 100%.

So then I was even more confused because he had apparently understood what I meant, but I hadn’t a clue. What on earth did almond paste have to do with anything?

And then enlightenment began to appear dimly in the mist of my ageing mind. It seemed I had intended something lewd, but expressed it somewhat tangentially because that’s what passes for humour to us Brits.

Was that it? It’s the best I can come up with, and it led me to realise just how much my mindset has changed since then. Lewdness has seemingly gone the way of the dodo. And maybe that’s the one true advantage of ageing. The gaining of wisdom is just delusional baloney. Or maybe they're the same thing.