Getting Old

Recently, someone said something like, "One of the worst things about getting old is remembering what it was like to be young." I can't remember who it was that said this - a failing memory is another bad thing about getting old - but whoever it was made an interesting point.

This picture of me, aged, I think, fourteen, was taken at the Mombasa Club pool, called by us the 'chini club' because the pool was at the bottom of steep cliffs below the main club buildings. The occasion was the annual children's swimming gala, and I have vivid memories of events there some sixty-six years ago. But can I say of that very enjoyable day that remembering it is the worst thing about getting old? It sort of hurts, that I'll never do anything like it again, but I'm thrilled that I experienced it.

That's what I feel about so many of the things I did in my life: I'm so, so pleased I did them. There are only a relatively few things that I wish I hadn't done. Some of them were under duress - like going to school in England - and a few had bad consequences, which I regret, but most led to relatively minor problems. Even some of the things which, at the time, seemed might turn out pretty disastrously, in retrospect were okay. A good example was doing the two-year contract in Jamaica (picture of school classrooms above), which was very stressful in so many ways - but so well worth it for the beautiful places we visited (beaches in particular) and the lovely people we met.

So I think that the remembering what I did in the past is one of the pleasures of my present life; and I do it a fair bit. My memories are helped by photographs, but I don't have to have a picture in order to remember happy events. The only down-side is that remembering is best done while sitting in the sun, and the north of Scotland isn't the best place to do that, particularly at this time of year.