I may be old, I may be past it, but I am not a quitter!

As the shop has been quiet this morning, I've spent it with a guitr strumming through "When I'm 64" by The Beatles. I'm 64 in August, we will be playing a birthday bash on the 23rd August at The Dublin Castle to celebrate and I am considering putting a Ska version of the Beatles classic together for it.  I find it slightly incongruous. My Dad was 64 in 1981. I was nineteen and he seemed ancient. At the time, we didn't really get on at all. I was what might be described as difficult, and I think he was suffering from PTSD. He was a tough nut. Been in the Australian army and airforce in WW2. Flew bombers for the RAF, got shot down over Romania and taken prisoner of war. He was man who wasn't afraid of a punch up. When I was 19 we were having one particularly bad row and he punched me in the mouth. To my amazement, it didn't knock me over, despite the fact that he'd caught me properly. I don't know who was more shocked, him or me. I just stood there and said "You are too old for fighting, but if you try that again, I'll hit you back". I fully expected him to launch into me, but he just stood there looking forlorn. He realised I was right. I was working on a building site at the time and I was extremely fit. We had a set of weights and I trained every day and was playing football. The sands of time had caught up with him. His anger subsided and he actually never lost his temper with me again. 

When I calmed down, I felt really bad about what had happened. I loved my Dad, I hadn't wanted to humiliate him in the way I had. He was a proud man and I genuinely don't think he'd ever been in such a situation in his life. Five years later, we had a proper night out. I apologised to him for what I said. His response surprised me. He said that he admired the way dealt with it. He admitted it was a wake up call. He was too old for fighting and scrapping. It had been a rude awakening, but he said that perhaps it was better that way than with some violent stranger. Now I am the same age. I've never really been one for fighting and scrapping, I wasn't in the military and I have always been of the opinion that staying calm and trying to talk my way out of difficult situations is better. That's not to say I've not lost it on occasions, but I've always been far more reticient about putting my fists up than my Dad was. But the sands of time are running out. 

How much more fit, healthy life is left for me? How much longer will I be able to live life in the way I want. On Saturday, I had a day out watching Charlton play Wrexham. It started in the pub, progressed to the football and then for a curry via the pub again. It was wonderful, but there may well come a day where the sands of time make it too difficult. I've had health challenges over the last decade and a half, that are pretty typical for men my age. Prostate problems, ankle and knee problems. A career as a Gigolo went out of the window with the prostatectomy and I physically can't play football anymore.  I can still play the guitar and sing with my band though. In factthe band is in rude good health at the moment!

And the band. We will be releasing our new single on Sunday 15th March, along with our new video. Unlike footballers, it seems to me musicians become better with age. Your tastes broaden and your influences widen. You become more open to change. A couple of times recently, mates of my age have said "aren't you a bit old for all that sort of stuff?". My answer is that if we were no good, then yes, but I think the band is better than ever. We are taking more chances. We are doing things I wouldn't consider when I was 21 and the band were in the prime of our first bloom. Our new album will contain the first track ever performed by The False Dots at our first rehearsal, a track called Wrong. We dropped it as we "thought it was rubbish". I played the band a version at a rehearsal in 2024 and we decided to do a version for fun, with Tom, our trumpet player singing. Strangely it sounds like it was written yesterday and is more relevant than ever.

Our next sinngle is another song of that vintage, albeit with a massive makeover. It is now more of a Ska song than the Damnedesque punk thrash I envisaged. Big Hairy Spider was a song I wrote, about a nightmare I had, about a rather pretty girl who lived up the road from me when I was a teenager. I think I'd been reading a House of Horror comic story about a beautiful seductress, who was actually a spider. My the songwriting partner rejected it on the grounds that it was 'pitifully bad'. It went into the unused song file (there may be 200 songs in there). When I was cleaning out papers, I read it and thought "Hey that would work brilliantly". It also gave me the opportunity to create a cartoon video using AI. I've shown this to a few friends and they think it is pretty good. I used a proper professional AI tool and there is a proper story.

One of the thing that really puzzles me is that people of my age typically have time and disposable money, but the music industry has no real interest in us. I actually think my bands appeal is far wider, as evidenced by the audiences at our shows, but the industry is missing a trick. For me it is a joy to play with young bands and also to see their audience reactions to us. There is a young band called No Diea playing with us at our next gig at The Dublin Castle. Their stuff reminds me a bit of the stuff we did when we first played "Wrong" in 1979! CLICK HERE TO HAVE A LISTEN TO NO IDEA. 

When it comes down to it, I've realised I may be old, I may be past it, but I am not a quitter! I'll keep going until I can't. We learn, we change, we adapt, but so long as we're having fun, we get by. I started with a difficult memory of my father. I'll end it with what he told me to draw a line under the incident. He said that it made him confront something that had been with him since the circumstances in which he'd been shot down. He felt a degree of anger and guilt that he'd never really come to terms with about the death of his rear gunner Spud Murphy, who died when they were shot down. He told me he'd realised he had to stop being angry and enjoy life. He couldn't change the past and he couldn't control the future, so he had to live in the present and enjoy it. He said to me "You are too young to understand this, but when your my age you will".