Looking Forward to Behaving Badly

I am looking forward to growing old disgracefully. It is, being of senior status, a good excuse to be many things that in a younger person would be regarded as disagreeable, outrageous and downright anti-social.

One argument for such behaviour is that the older generation deserve the right to be so inclined simply because they have survived to assume the role of Elders and purveyors of wise counsel.

Some just act and behave badly for the sheer hellraising thrill. Sometimes you may come across someone who has aged calmly, respectfully and desires naught but a quiet existence. It is a time, after a frenetic working life, to sit and read, listen to music, visit relatives, dote on grandchildren and, oh, yes, of being more likely, statistically, to start a boundary dispute with neighbours, get involved in campaigns against ethnic minorities, planning issues and young unmarried mothers and to champion wide open spaces and endangered wildlife to name but a few areas of focus.

On a Wednesday, in particular, which tends to be the busiest in my working week I am amazed by the sheer numbers of the retired population out and about in large rambling groups, on tandem bicycles or in two seater convertible sports cars. Single handedly this sector of the population is supporting the pub food industry, Milletts outdoor Supplies and the Mazda Car Corporation. It is an effort to be celebrated unless of course the outdoor activities come with a home made packed lunch, already owned hiking boots, cagoules and ski-poles and a compact beige coloured hatchback rather than a speedy roadster. Such things will not pull the nation out of recession but may favour the balance of payments.

I am not sure what group of senior citizens to adopt as my prospective role model.

That was until this last weekend when I became convinced that my future image and persona as a retiree should be based on the Mancunian Punk Poet, John Cooper Clarke, aged 64.

He is, and indeed, has always been a diminutive figure of a man. Lean, almost garden cane dimension spindly legs in drainpipe jeans, a shock of unruly frizzled hair and huge round lens sunglasses.

In fact, he has not changed much at all since I first came across him in the pages of NME and Smash Hits in the mid to late 1970's.

In the interim he has done well to outlive a drug fuelled diet and other excesses and did, on stage in York last Saturday night, remark that his friends were aghast at how much weight he had put on since his recent and successful rehab. On a proportional basis his friends could be right as an increase from about 5 stone to 6 stone is excessive.

He is a complete live wire. He hops around the stage between a small table laden high with his life's work of poems and observations and the microphone which he works with the skill of a frontman.

The audience are a good mix of those knowledgeable of his extensive back catalogue, the curious, those who have him on their list to see before he dies and a few who were only there to see the other acts on show including John Shuttleworth, impresario and keyboard wizard.

The works of John Cooper Clarke will be familiar to many of a certain age group.  In my mind, impressionable and formative in the late 1970's I recall his innovative  "Splat rhymes with Twat".

To a teenager as I was in that period the works of the rebellious and controversial performer could be savoured by playing his poems complete with their driving rock and roll backing track at full volume to annoy parents and siblings.

It was clever lyrically, mesmerising in rhythm and struck just the right tone of indifference mixed with outrage at the social and economic events of those tempestuous and uncertain times in the UK.

Performance artists were not afraid to show their political affiliations back in the day which contrasts sharply with current, spoon fed, sanitised and politically correct efforts.

It was not by any means superficial or sensationalist in form and content. It was just the truth which was held by a good proportion of the young population but fettered from expressing themselves by poor education, authority, suppression by the police and just being unemployed and hard up.

A few sparks did fly with the inner city riots in the early 1980's, support for the miners and later against the imposition of the Poll Tax. John Cooper Clarke captured that feeling and spirit of the generation aptly and with a rock star charisma.

The years subsequently may have seen him sidelined from his former role as a voice for the downtrodden and he was conspicuous by his absence from public life for a couple of decades but he has always written and archived the important issues.

His delivery of the spoken word remains hypnotic. There may be a slight stumbling over the staccato pronunciation and there is a reliance on reading his work from his holy scrolls but each poem was concluded with a full recollection from memory. He definitely still has it  up there in his rats nest of a hairstyle.

The prospect of my sporting a similarly striking and distinctive full head of hair is long gone and looking ahead to retirement there will be even less under current rates of receding action.

I can however work on the body shape, although realistically only after a serious and debilitating illness or self abuse, and the sophisiticated fashion sense as long as shoes, trousers, shirt and blazer can be sourced from my usual outlets of Hush Puppy, Farah slacks, Van Heusen and Marks and Spencer.

Hijacking some of  the inimitable words of John Cooper Clarke I am looking forward to being a F****** Pensioner and behaving F****** badly.

I do retain some good manners and the asterisks are only there for impact as I only really mean Flippin'.