Bloody old people

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3706800.stm

Old people say: "Being young was much better when we were young than it is now. Being old is much better now we are old than it used to be. Ooh, isn't everything awful?"

I hate old people.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 1 October 2004 13:59 (twenty years ago)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3842041.stm

Headline: We had a lout of laughs.

Paragraphs 2 and 3: When he was four years old, David Stainer was almost killed when a German bomber crashed into his father's shoe repair workshop in Poole, Dorset. He was trapped under rubble, along with his father, after the Junkers 88 was shot out of the sky by a Spitfire as it returned from a reconnaissance mission.

Sounds like a scream. Wish I'd been alive back then.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:00 (twenty years ago)

"Life was much happier when I was young and attractive and had my whole life ahead of me and could go out drinking beer and chasing girls, rather than being at deaths door and occasionally soiling myself in the home I've been consigned to by my thankless offspring. I blame the Labour government."

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:01 (twenty years ago)

Actually, that post has just posed the question 'What will Dave Q be like at 70?'

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:02 (twenty years ago)

'In the 50s people seemed kinder and had more time for each other, they said.

People were neighbourly, '

well there had just been a big war a few years before so that sense of togetherness was imbibed and naturally lingered for a while i imagine

'public transport was good'

must've been nice to travel to school by HORSE i agree

'music was better'

Al Martino?

'housing more affordable.'

fair enough

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:09 (twenty years ago)

"Help The Aged"

Help the aged,
one time they were just like you,
drinking, smoking cigs and sniffing glue. Help the aged,
don't just put them in a home,
can't have much fun in there all on their own.

Give a hand, if you can,
try and help them to unwind.
Give them hope & give them comfort 'cos they're running out of time.

*In the meantime we try.
Try to forget that nothing lasts forever. No big deal so give us all a feel.
Funny how it all falls away.
When did you first realise?
It's time you took an older lover baby. Teach you stuff
although he's looking rough.
Funny how it all falls away.

Help the aged
'cos one day you'll be older too
- you might need someone who can
pull you through
& if you look very hard
behind the lines upon their face you may see where you are headed
and it's such a lonely place.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:09 (twenty years ago)

On a more serious note, from what my dad tells me the 50s and 60s was far from a golden age if you happened to be black or Asian in Britain. But I suspect there's a subtext of "there were fewer darkies around" to some of this reminiscing.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:11 (twenty years ago)

pretty hard on most ethnic minorities in the UK around that time tho to be fair

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:13 (twenty years ago)

I spoke to some old (ie in their sixties) friends of my dad some time ago, (one of whom is in a mixed-race relationship, and has been since the '50s, as an aside) and their view was that in the fifties, it really did seem that everything was just going to get better and better. There was this sense of hope, and optimism for the future back then. I can kind of see what they meant.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:16 (twenty years ago)

Also, the whole 'more neighbourly' thing is also suspect - apparently crime rocketed during the blitz - people taking advantage of darkness, looting etc. The 'Blitz spirit'.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:18 (twenty years ago)

...and 50 years later, the IPOD. Quod erat not fucking demonstrandum.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:18 (twenty years ago)

The ipod looks pretty lame compared to sputnick, and an aeroplane that can fly faster than the speed of sound, though, doesn't it?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:20 (twenty years ago)

Yes. The iPod IS pretty lame, that's what I meant.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:21 (twenty years ago)

OTM (stevem too).

Also, people always tend to look back on things and forget all the bad things, focussing on the good. I can't really remember anything bad about school now, but I know that a lot of the time it fucking sucked.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:21 (twenty years ago)

old people = nicer than kids

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:23 (twenty years ago)

Not necessarily, some old people are evil crazy bastards.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:25 (twenty years ago)

(sorry barry, i'm not very with it @ the moment {or ever})

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:26 (twenty years ago)

Old men tend to be quite funny, at least at bus stops. Old women tend to seem bitter - though there are nice, funny ones too. It's odd that when they were younger, people their age would probably be dead already.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:27 (twenty years ago)

Perhaps that's why they're bitter? The expected to be dead and free of the horrible, horrible world they hate so much, and bloody bitch Brenda from number 42 popped her clogs a long time ago even though she loved the interweb

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:28 (twenty years ago)

Have you ever pointed this out to them, at the bus stop?

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:29 (twenty years ago)

No, I fear them too much

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:29 (twenty years ago)

Yes, the good old days of rationing, lethal smog and unquestioning deference where homosexuality and abortion were illegal, unmarried mothers were forced to give up their children or were compulsorily sectioned, working women were forced to give up work if they became pregnant, the Equal Opportunities and Racial/Sexual Discrimination Acts were a pipedream of the future and Irish and black people legally discriminated against and barred from renting accommodation or taking up work. The days when you were lucky to survive five years after retirement. The days of John Christie and Peter Rachman. The days when every teenager was made to feel ashamed for not having been old enough to fight in the war. The days when "winning the war" became a crutch for Britain rather than an inspiration. The days which were so suffocating and intolerable that everyone who came up in that decade, from Spike Milligan through to John Lennon, couldn't wait to tear the whole fucking edifice down.

Yes, those were the days.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:30 (twenty years ago)

mentioning it at the bus stop just seems cruel. And if tissp is right, they're secretly hoping I'm some thug who will end it all for them.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:31 (twenty years ago)

I like old people, generally.

― Penelope_111 (Penelope_111), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:31 (twenty years ago)

I like people, generally.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:32 (twenty years ago)

I can't remember the last time I talked to an old (ie 65+) person. I think my shallow young persons ways have made me completely ignore or overlook them.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:33 (twenty years ago)

I talk to old people quite a lot, on the phone.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:33 (twenty years ago)

I actually quite like old people, but sometimes they manage to do or say things that make my blood boil. I think it's easier for old people to polarise my opinions--whereas people around my age I can feel "meh" about

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:33 (twenty years ago)

I think its time to put my 'find a rich old dear and become like the son she never had and wait for her to pop her clogs' plan into action.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:34 (twenty years ago)

(NB. This is not on a specialist premium rate number.)

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:34 (twenty years ago)

I want to revisit this thread in twenty or thirty years.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:34 (twenty years ago)

I like people generally as well. The best thing about old people is when they start to tell you some story about their lives, and it's something like how they were on a cargo ship going to murmansk in the '50's and the ship ran aground and broke its back, and the russians sent the crew back to "the west" in a sealed train, or something like that.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:36 (twenty years ago)

obviously, I get people of all ages in my shop. I don't think any age group are more prone to idiocy, generally. Perhaps the "older generation" are more prone to racism, but to be honest, I'm not even sure about that.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago)

Wisdom is more important than age. You could be 18 years old and still be wise, whereas I know 80-year-old people who have learned nothing from life.

But to paraphrase Bill Hicks for the 967th time this week: "You either love people in general of all ages or you shut the fuck up."

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:38 (twenty years ago)

and they tied an onion to their belt, which was the style at the time

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:40 (twenty years ago)

I... agree. Fuck!

xpost

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:40 (twenty years ago)

I want to revisit this thread in twenty or thirty years

Well, you know, me too. But I'm (perhaps arrogantly) confident that I'm not going to have turned into one of these "everything's awful, things used to be so much better" types. The main reason being, I think, that I'm sufficiently technology fixated to always think things are better than they've ever been before.

The future > the present > the past.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago)

Wise people can fuck off with their inscrutable, lofty "ahhs".

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago)

"I always tell my friends when they get into arguments with old people, I stop them and say 'look, don't argue with this guy - he probably killed people in World War Two. 'He's killed before and he'll kill again!" - Victor from Big Brother 5

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago)

I wish Victor comic was still going.

Wait a minute, perhaps it is still going.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:42 (twenty years ago)

that's the funniest Victor quote i've seen

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:43 (twenty years ago)

The future > the present > the past.

Pure speculation here but I doubt that is the case when you're 70.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:44 (twenty years ago)

I assumed he was just getting the chronology straight in his head.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:46 (twenty years ago)

(xpost)

Tell that to Philip Baker Hall or Leonard Cohen.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:46 (twenty years ago)

Though I suppose that would be backwards. Maybe time will reverse itself when we're 70.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:47 (twenty years ago)

There was some article abt it (the victor xpost gah) in the guardian, perhaps last week? I think it packed in a couple of years ago.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:47 (twenty years ago)

Working in a supermarket maximises the polarisation in your attitude to dodgers of coffin. I like the ones that give you sweets on the checkout because they feel sorry for you/make endearing old-style quips/elevate cheerful whistling to an art form. I don't like the ones that stand still in stupid places/park their Mongol Chariot(tm) in stupid places/complain about not being able to get their pound out of their trolley/buy one get one free offers or lack thereof/how there are too many foreigners.

Also fucking get over buses being late, they're not stopping for twenty minutes on clear stretches of road just to piss you off.

I think some of the irritation may be secretly rooted in fear that everyone inevitably ends up like that when they're older. The ones that are all eccentric and cool are like rays of hope.

― Michael Philip Philip Philip Annoyman (Ferg), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:47 (twenty years ago)

I believe that we'll never die. Quantum immortality and that. (xpost)

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:48 (twenty years ago)

Or the one hundred and something tribal leader they found in a South American rainforest. He could name hundreds upon hundreds of types of flora but couldn't remember the names of all his wives. Dude had literally hundreds of kids, the last of which was fathered when he was about eighty. What a man.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

Oh, I do hope I'm not eccentric and cool. They always seem the most deluded of all.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

Tell that to Philip Baker Hall or Leonard Cohen.

Or the one hundred and something year-old tribal leader they found in a South American rainforest. He could name hundreds upon hundreds of types of flora but couldn't remember the names of all his wives. Dude had literally hundreds of kids, the last of which was fathered when he was about eighty. What a man.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

by complaining they are effectively attempting to re-affirm their own status, existence even. i bitch therefore i am. it's been my motto for 15 years already.

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:49 (twenty years ago)

old people aren't as pleasing on the eye as young people

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:50 (twenty years ago)

i suppose the problem is not that they're complaining it's just they're so biased and generalising

― Brigadier Rainham Steele, Mrs (blueski), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:50 (twenty years ago)

Obv the second I get near 50 I'm going to go mental and treat people like shit, moaning loudly about how shit it is to be me and why it's only fair that I'm shitty to everyone else.

Ah, hypocrasy

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago)

Unlike you...

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago)

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IS THAT ALL THAT MATTERS TO YOU PEOPLE, FUCKING LOOKS????!!!!!!

*long pause*

sorry, I've no idea where that outburst came from...

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago)

x-post

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:52 (twenty years ago)

no looks are not all that matter to us, nobody likes an idiot afterall.

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:53 (twenty years ago)

I doubt that is the case when you're 70.

Technological advances will have overcome all the downsides of old age by then. I'll be fine.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:54 (twenty years ago)

I will not make it to 70 so my interest in this question is purely sociological/voyeuristic.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:55 (twenty years ago)

I will be a cyborg.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago)

Young Ronan I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, you cheeky young scamp. You're not too old for a clip round the ear!

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 1 October 2004 14:56 (twenty years ago)

Maybe the perception of old people is skewed because it's only the dribble splattered daft racist variety that complain all the time. There could be tons of them quietly minding their own business and listening to Dizzee Rascal MP3s in the comfort of their own home.

― Michael Philip Philip Philip Annoyman (Ferg), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:57 (twenty years ago)

the old people i work with are very racist indeed. this would be ok if they weren't so damn unpleasant to look at.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:58 (twenty years ago)

Or having too much fun on their Stannah stairlifts.

xpost

― Penelope_111 (Penelope_111), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:59 (twenty years ago)

BNP members tend to be very ugly too. I wonder if we're onto something here.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 14:59 (twenty years ago)

(idly wonders what it'll be like when the post acid house generation hit their seventies)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:00 (twenty years ago)

A friend of mine knows loads of pensioners who do various recreational drugs quite regularly. They stick Es up their arses or something.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:06 (twenty years ago)

“When Return Of The Jedi came out, there were street parties. George V came out to see it, and we were all given a silver sixpence with a picture of Queen Victoria on one side and a picture of Jabba the Hut on the other.”

― Richard C (avoid80), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:19 (twenty years ago)

Just thinking that a lot of posters on this thread are from the UK (not that that's a criticism!) and wondering if the attitude of the elderly in the USA is remarkably different than the UK. Obviously, US people who were alive during the war were not under constant threat from bombing during the Blitz/Civilian casualties like in Europe, and then economic depression, and I wonder how much this shaped them. Also, (the issue of racism is what prompted this) I do not immediately tend to associate the elderly here with racism, nor do I hera it all the time, probably because they were immigrants themselves or the children of the huge Ellis Island boom. Not saying that there was not racism in this generation, not at all, but it was a different sort; not a fear of all immigrants coming into a mostly homogenous culture like in the U.K., but fear of people moving around in society and geography within a country. Most of the comments I have heard from the elderly, my grandparents included, concern the influx of African-Americans to the major Northern Cities after the war.
So, um, generally I like old people.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:28 (twenty years ago)

Old people are okay.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:44 (twenty years ago)

Well, you know, in the US, the 55-and-overs support Bush the least.

My 88-year-old grandma just got back from a road trip with a gentleman companion. She complained to my mom that she'd hurt her leg while up there & it was still bothering her. She said she'd fallen off a barstool!

Also, she lives in a building that is for retirees only, and it sounds like they're all whooping it up in there. A security guard got fired because he was caught having a three-way in a storage closet with two of the residents.

― k3rry (dymaxia), Friday, 1 October 2004 15:59 (twenty years ago)

http://www.dking-gallery.com/pix/ResidentsG.jpg

― Dan Perry '08 (Dan Perry), Friday, 1 October 2004 16:09 (twenty years ago)

I like old people generally, but as with anyone else, if they spit while they're talking, it sort of bugs me.

― that girl you used to know (luna.c), Friday, 1 October 2004 16:13 (twenty years ago)

Just spit back. It's the only language they respect.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 1 October 2004 16:16 (twenty years ago)

My friend was in West Virginia for a while for grad school, and the entire rest of his building was elderly, and they were a bit suspicious of him for a while. Until someone locked themselves out and he shimmied up the drainpipe and through their window, and then they bought him some Jack Daniels in return. He was allowed to drink with them after that.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 1 October 2004 16:39 (twenty years ago)

There weren't no ILX when I were a lad. It were all fields here. There was sheep where ILM is now. You could go out to the theatre, have some beers and get in a fight and still have change from half a florin.

As I believe ILX's oldest regular, I am reading this whole thread as if it is all about me.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:19 (twenty years ago)

Speak up there, young man!! *Cupping ear* And don't mumble!

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:22 (twenty years ago)

Hate and fear make people old and horrible.

― donna (donna), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:31 (twenty years ago)

When I hit 70 I'm gonna start doing heroin. It will make my last days interesting and ensure that there are few of them.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:55 (twenty years ago)

The future > the present > the past.

Pure speculation here but I doubt that is the case when you're 70.

Both my grandparents would say that this was true, I think (they are 72 and 74). I mean, maybe not in terms of their personal lives but societally, anyway. All their culture-consuming habits are like more up to date than mine, especially wrt my gran and fiction.

They are pretty unusual though. I miss them.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 1 October 2004 19:03 (twenty years ago)

"here we sit
two bloody ol' people
and nobody wants us
to pla-ay-y..."

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Friday, 1 October 2004 19:14 (twenty years ago)

Don't click at work:
BLOODY OLD PEOPLE!!

― Bloody Old Guy, Friday, 1 October 2004 21:29 (twenty years ago)

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