Modern Life Nonsense, June Brown - Eastenders

                                    Modern Life

… “But peacocking productivity pervades, especially in big-city jobs.

The Toilet, Paul Falconer Poole (1807-1879)

Photo Credit: Atkinson Art Gallery Collection [CC BY-NC-SA]

You take 14 minute lunch breaks and send your first email at 6.24am, four minutes after your alarm pealed, two hours before you are expected in the office, while you squeeze Colgate on your toothbrush with your spare hand and keep an eye on the mirror: if you’re multi-tasking and no one was watching, are you even multi-tasking?

…It’s not just work. Arranging plans with friends involves a subtext of one-upmanship (Ah, six doesn’t work – I don’t leave work until seven”), with the upshot that you end up having a drink at 10pm on a Tuesday evening, so neither of you loses face. Don’t mistake the impulse for Stakhanovite: it’s more self-important than that.”

                                                                                                                (Phoebe Luckhurst, The i)

                                                 What planet are you on?

 Stakhanovite refers to Alexei Stakhanov who was an exceptionally hardworking and productive mine worker in the former Soviet Union. (For those, like me, who didn’t know.)

                                         People

Old Man Smoking, Nicholas Condy (1793-1857)

Photo Credit: Royal Albert Memorial Museum [CC BY-NC-SA]

June Brown is my kind of woman. The actor who plays Dot Cotton in East Enders has said that, at 92, she still smokes and drinks and has no intention of giving up her vices because, after all, she “will die of something fairly soon.”

She’s right. What always baffles me is why on earth anyone over a certain age would persist in being careful – with their diet, their habits or even their addictions.

I can just about bear visiting middle-aged people who offer me “healthy food” – they may at least have time to want to remain healthy for. But at my age – 75 – I am fed up at having to choke down crème fraiche instead of cream, or being given yoghurt on my strawberries instead of full-fat, yellow Jersey. Not to mention “spreads” instead of butter, and “biscuits” consisting of squashed nuts and any number of suspicious-looking seeds. As for muesli – I’d prefer porridge with cream and brown sugar.

What is wrong with these fear-filled oldies? Do they want to live for ever? Wasn’t it Kingsley Amis who said something along the lines of, “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare?” And anyway, isn’t the current thinking to stick with the regime you know? It’s probably far worse for your body to suffer the sudden cessation of smoking and drinking than to continue in its lovely, familiar way until you pop off.

…Our motto should be: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” And it’s worth thinking about that. Because it’s not next year. It’s not next week. No, it could be tomorrow.

And if we can’t have a bit of fun during our last days, then when, for God’s sake, can we?

(Virginia Ironside, The Guardian, 2019)

Spot on common sense.