May you have comfortable shoes

One of the unavoidable shocks of growing older is the way you look in photographs.

One of the unavoidable shocks of growing older is the way you look in photographs. Even if, like me, you were sensibly, necessarily, never the least bit vain about your appearance, it is a surprise to see how different you look from the way you imagine yourself.

A few weeks ago my middle son rang in the middle of the day at the office, a most unusual occurrence, to tell me his daughter, my four-year-old granddaughter, was suddenly in hospital and would we like to spend some time with her the next day.

Little Maneesha had developed a fever about 10 days after coming home from a family holiday in India. Despite frequent requests from her conscientious parents, the GPs had been slow to order a blood test. Finally they did and the call came in the middle of the night: get Maneesha to an emergency department, she has typhoid.

When my wife and I went to sit with her for several hours the following day, she was in no danger but she was very unwell. She was happy to see us, nonetheless. Her default position on life is joy, wit and happiness, and plenty of spirit.

One hand had been injured by a cannula that didn’t quite take, the other arm was strapped around with extensive paraphernalia for intravenous antibiotics. The main sign she was unwell was that she would drift off to sleep pretty easily. But when she was awake she chattered and joked with her characteristic gaiety.

Appropriately, perhaps, she had a toy medicine kit and insisted I carry out numerous procedures on some of the dolls and fluffy toys on the bed.

The object of this was to create an opportunity for good-natured ridicule. It allowed her to pronounce, quite rightly and repeatedly: “Dadda is a very bad doctor.” Although long schooled in the emotional inarticulacy of my generation, I was in danger of disgracing myself, and no doubt distressing her, by blubbing, though that ignominy was finally avoided.

Now, I am a sprightly young fellow barely into my 60s. I will soon have to decide, I suppose, whether to make a long-term career in journalism or do something else when I grow up. I was shocked, therefore, to see the elderly looking gentleman in the photo my son took of the hospital scene.

Who was this old codger with those thin bony fingers? What was he doing on a weekday wearing sneakers with sports trousers and a blazer? What was all that bristly white hair doing where once he had worn a flowing dark beard? Here’s a fashion tip for blokes as they grow older. Your hair may or may not go grey, your beard certainly will, so don’t wear it longer than designer stubble length or you’ll look like Moses. And don’t wear sneakers unless you are sporting explicitly casual gear generally.

I went to a high powered policy conference in Bowral a year or two ago and stayed on for a day after it finished. The hotel had silently filled up with grey nomads, travelling around the country fondling antiques, admiring old buildings, trying out gourmet restaurants, assessing artworks, buying second-hand books — all the things I like to do myself actually.

Anyway, at breakfast I was wearing new red sneakers, having planned a long walk around town. A waitress kindly wished me good morning and remarked, unprovoked, that they looked like “very comfortable shoes”.

Very comfortable shoes! I ask you. Has there ever been a more cutting assessment than that?

Then, a week or two after we saw Maneesha, my wife and I were taking a holiday in the sun. Bad mistake. My Irish skin, genetically designed for the wistful mists of Galway and the black country of Connemara, has grown less robust with the years and a morning’s coffee under faulty shade led to me suddenly resembling a lobster whose red shell was spotty, cracked and damaged.

Growing older does have compensations. At one point, with both her parents momentarily out of the room, Maneesha turned to my wife and me, and for no reason except the love and generosity and brilliant flame of life that course through her every moment of consciousness, declared: “I love you.”

I love you too, kiddo.