Bog Myrtle & Peat

There’s truth in so much of what’s said about getting older. But complaints and resignation are broadcast so abundantly by the old that it’s easy to ignore them. They say that time flies, and children grow up so fast; that as the spark and rage of youth declines, pleasure’s found in smaller comforts. These sentiments are repeated so often and with such bland generality that it’s hard to give them credence – until one day you find they’ve come true, and the change which has been so heavily trailed and anticipated strikes you like a bolt from the blue. 

And now it’s hard to see what response that change requires. Nobody feels old in themselves, and when people in their sixtieth or seventieth year are confronted by moments of infirmity, it seems to bowl them over with astonishment. Youngsters are surprised to find their parents were caught unawares by failing health or reduced mobility. They understand that old people are dying, inch by inch – and yet for all their gnomish recital of wisdom and advice, old people themselves are entirely overturned by the experience of frailty.

In this small and quiet corner of the working world, farmers grow old in the secrecy of solitude. Fitter and more ready to fight than most, they’ll make only the smallest concessions to dwindling strength. They don’t seem to notice their age, and hardly recognising the irony, I’ll sometimes pass a tightly-screwed jar to be opened by men of twice my age. And walking in the wake of shepherds and stalkers, I’ll pretend to be distracted by some detail or comment so that I can catch my breath. If they’re kind, they’ll concede to my weakness without comment. If they’re not, then I’ll hear about it. These strengths and resiliences mask the influence of years which advance in a pattern of clipping and lambing and preparing the tups for work.

But at the Mart on busy days, there are subtle marks of stubborness in the men who wait by the pens or the rail which runs around the ring. They’re old and they look it, but for reasons which lie beyond grey hair and heavy, knotted hands – because if they still have hair at all, it’s heavy with brylcreem and pomade. Combs stick out of their shirt’s top pocket; the black teeth are slick and greasily poised to boost a sagging quiff. They wear blue overalls with the ankles rolled up; heavy leather boots and a lashing of tweed on their jackets. When the weather calls for a cap, most men will reach for a kind made famous and then forgotten by traitorous trends – a play on the traditional bunnet, but with the futuristic improvement of elasticated sides and a plasticated brim, often stained yellow by the endless updraft of nicotine. These are men of the 1950s; they grew up as teddy boys and the small-town reaction to Marlon Brando’s Johnny, who never thought of dying. But they’re coming home to roost now, and the anachronism of old fashions are more ageing than varicose veins or the burst resplendence of a pendulous nose.

The advance and retreat of style is continuous, although in recent years the patterns have accelerated to rise and fall in the space of five years instead of fifty. And the rapid revolutions of trendiness merely confirm those old men in decisions made fifty or sixty years ago and which never they strayed from thereafter. Only a small amount of headspace is occupied by concerns for aesthetics in this part of the world, but those quiffs were new once upon a time – and perhaps they represented a break from the continuity of even more old-fashioned parents. 

Having heaped their hair into loaves of oiled-up coiffage, these boys said their piece and were content with the definition it gave them as men. But they were never tempted to imitate the growing mass of youth which rose beneath them in subsequent decades; they refused to cast off their tweed for the temporary glamour of hoodies or denim. If they had done, ridicule would have certainly ensued; folk would wonder if they hadn’t gone mad for some lassie at the bar, and perhaps a family member would take them to one side, reminding them of the cruelty inflicted equally upon young and old alike to “act your age”.

I have sometimes been puzzled by these men, looking up in their direction as I have for almost forty years. The resilience of that rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic has been surprising – and if challenged to explain their appearance, maybe they’d double down on a strand of homespun pragmatism, arguing that they look that way because everybody has to look some way, and you might as well stick to what you know. But now it seems possible that old age has crept up on them, and they’re blind to the irony of a youthful, rebellious aesthetic writ suddenly small upon rheumy eyes and bandy legs. Because I notice that in recent years, a mass of young people has emerged to lie beneath me too, inscrutable and strange as the old people who used to lie above. I’ve sometimes envied those youngsters, much as I’ve envied local people I’ve met on sunlit holidays abroad. But I have no desire to be them or fly their colours on my mast. Remaining true to the astonishment of an eighty year man who finds he can no longer walk a circuit of his farm, I am still the boy I was at eighteen. My decisions are muted and my choices incrementally subdued, but they’re true to the child I was. I remain certain that I’ll never be old. And surrounded by clear, repeated warnings of all that lies ahead, I expect it’ll take me by surprise one day.