Yesterday was my 51st birthday. Or, as one of my daughters put it when I came downstairs for breakfast: “Ha ha! You’re old, and I’m not!”
One of the advantages of being this age is that I’ve stopped caring about comments like that. As my father observes, whatever age you actually are, you still feel 25 on the inside. As I spent my formative years listening to The Who and the Rolling Stones, anyone expecting me to grow old gracefully is in for a shock.
In particular, since I turned 50, there are many more things I consider a waste of time; of which more anon, perhaps, in some later rant. Admittedly I do now want a big garden shed, but only so that I can fit a regulation 6′ x 4′ wargaming table in it, so I do not yet consider myself middle-aged.
In a tenuous connection to the above (it also has a 51 in it), last night I looked through some family history papers left by my mother when she died, including extracts from the 1851 census for our home town. Several things seem strange to the modern eye:
- The number of children per family. Much larger than today, and (from other records in the same folder) a scary number of them died before they reached a year old.
- Women have no profession listed other than “wife” or “unmarried”. (With one exception, noted as a “tapeweaver”.)
- Some of the listed occupations are hard to understand; it took me quite a while to find out that a “peruke maker” made wigs.
I wonder what my great-grandchildren, if any, will make of what I do for a living?
