Every now and then something crops up that makes my ever-increasing decrepitude inescapably more apparent.

Sometimes it’s a fleeting and unexpected glimpse in a shop window. Is that really me? Sometimes it’s a case of mistaken identity. On three occasions this last year it’s been when I was mistaken for my 95-year-old mother’s husband.

To make the mistaken assumption even more emphatically humiliating, on the last of these exchanges it was when I was pushing her in her wheelchair.

“Is your good lady wife all right?”

“Well, she’s over there with my 13-year-old son buying flowers. So I can ask her when she comes back. Or we can ask my mother sitting here?”

Talking of my 13-year-old, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been mistaken for his grandad.

“Let’s just ask grandad if that’s OK, shall we?”

“Yes, let’s just do that. We shall have to go back to Watford cemetery and dig him up first and I’m not sure what kind of response we’ll get from the decomposing corpse, buried in 1998, but we can certainly ask grandad.”

Asking for my pensioner’s Railcard is now another regular occurrence.

“Will you be using your Railcard for this journey, sir?”

“And which Railcard would that be? Surely not the young persons? Ooooo you’re such a flirt.”

And the ignominy of having someone jump up and surrender their seat to me is now common place. Four occasions that one. Leaping up from the seats reserved for the elderly or infirm. It took a couple of goes but now I’ve wised up sufficiently to take the seat when it’s offered, instead of staring back perplexed.

But I think the ultimate accolade and the ritual passing into the honourable status of officially declared wizened old git occurred this week when a photograph of me from 30 years ago appeared on a Facebook page entitled Old Colchester and District. This Facebook page is actually brilliantly put together and features all sorts of interesting pictures of historic Colchester. There, staring back at me, amongst the affectionately assembled images of old relics and antiquities was a picture of yours truly, taken some time back in the dark ages when I was just starting out at the arts centre.

I’ve recreated it for you now.

At first glance you’d have to say, well, to put it very gently, the intervening years have not been kind. It might be fair to speculate that it must have been that little 30 year holiday in Alcatraz that has left the specimen so ravaged. One can only imagine the horrors of incarceration, the decimation a life of daily torture and confinement leaves on the psyche, a place where every day you wake up to a fresh hell, your soul plunging into an abyss of crushing despair.

Only a life of total spiritual desolation could wreak such havoc on one’s appearance.

Compare that to a world where he could arise each morning and go to work at a small community based arts centre, something that he truly loved, where he could make a modest but meaningful contribution to the world of poetry and the arts. Like a gentle, nurtured little wild flower, being blown hither and thither in the breeze of ephemeral beauty. What would he look like then?

Would he still resemble a version of Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses (only with a wasting disease thrown in) or would he be more akin to the hopeful and sprightly youth in the original pic?

The truth is, of course, that I’ve had the most wonderful ride at Colchester Arts Centre and I’m not done yet. I shall be recreating the shot again in another 30 years. See you then!

  • Please note: to avoid confusion, the arts centre is still currently closed due to Covid-19. Check the website for updates.