‘No place for anti-Semitism in Australia’ — are our ‘leaders’ sure?

Everything about “emerging” as an elder is vile, and once you turn 60, things, as WB Yeats might have noted, fall even further apart.

It’s been gratifying, on the vertiginous downslope of life, to recognise the many benefits of growing old: the deference shown by young people, the courtesy of shop assistants and waiters, the warm welcome at cocktail bars, the barista’s compassionate patience in response to your mildly impaired decision-making.

Ha! Only kidding; everything about “emerging” as an elder is vile, and once you turn 60, things, as WB Yeats might have noted, fall even further apart, and judging by my stomach, the centre most certainly cannot hold.

I have, however, hitherto been blessed with good physical health, thanks to my patrician breeding and not because I am, as my wife cruelly suggests, from vulgar peasant stock.

Either way, in the 15 years since I rejoined this newspaper, I’ve never taken a sick day, honest. That’s downright un-Australian, say my friends, eyes misting over at memories of long, boozy hours (anyone else remember full-strength beer?) at the cricket, glorious days that were never deducted from their annual leave.

I never fall ill ... and don’t care to tempt fate.

Not for me to pass judgment; it’s just that as an adult migrant, I was unschooled in the traditional Aussie sport of sickie-chucking and never embraced it, having been brought up to believe stealing, whether from a taxpayer’s superannuation nest egg, a Future Fund or my employer, was wrong. But mostly because I never fall ill and don’t care to tempt fate.

Bodily health fine, then (until the test results come back next week), and 150 sick days in the bank for when the reaper swings his scythe in my direction. But mentally, oh dear me, that’s a very different story.

I’d heard of cognitive decline, but assumed that meant leaving the house without trousers (which hardly ever happens) or forgetting my wife’s name (I have “Sally” scrawled in marker pen on the inside of my left wrist; I may get it inked one day, but tattoos are so permanent and we’ve barely been married 30 years).

Until quite recently I considered myself, linguistically at least, reasonably alert. I used to understand practically all the words I heard on the news, but no longer. Even seemingly simple phrases nowadays rattle around my mind in a vain quest for comprehension.

The slide started a couple of years ago, by coincidence about the time of the last election, when I began to hear words I previously – but mistakenly – thought I understood, such as stability and reform, racism and division. I’m still puzzling over the altered meanings of the words economic, sound and management, while post-voice I’ve retired modest, respectful and generous from my vocabulary entirely.

I might recognise, to pluck an example out of the air, an expression’s individual components – “renewable”, capable of being renewed, like a frequent flyer’s passport; “energy”, nature’s mysterious, fundamental capacity for doing work, rarely seen outside the private sector; and “superpower”, a country so mighty that it can impose its influence over the whole world.

Put them together, though, and they coalesce into what sounds to my ageing ears like the babbling of an idiot wearing a bright paisley tie.

My bewilderment accelerates almost daily. Here’s another sound bite I don’t get: we keep being told by our “leaders” (anyone recall what that word means?) that there is “no place for anti-Semitism in Australia”, but that doesn’t make any sense. There are plenty of places for it, as so many of our new arrivals have worked out: head for the smart suburbs where the Jewish people live, and off you go to do some hating. No one in authority will stop you.

So while it’s terrifying to think I’m losing my faculties, it’s the best explanation for my confusion. Otherwise it means our government is terminally diseased, helmed by a bunch of duplicitous, morally and intellectually stunted, self-serving and self-aggrandising cretins.

Young or old, you’d have to be demented to believe that, surely?