Getting Old...I appreciate it.
As the saying goes. 'Old age and treachery beats youth and enthusiam everytime.'
I'm better in my 40's at cooking, managing money, making lurvvvee. I have cheaper car insurance and can outdrive boy racers in their saxos. If I choose to. I don't feel that competitive edge everytime a mobile disco pulls up next to me at traffic lights. I can be comfortable in a well fitted suit or jeans and t-shirt and don't have to follow that latest clothing and fashion fads.
I can listen to all types of music, enjoy discovering new bands and those that influenced them.
I can drink if I choose, Beer, Wine or spirits, for the taste not to get rolling around drunk in the street.
I write with a fountain pen, shave with a double edged or a cut throat razor and wear a watch that still uses a clockwork wind up mechanism. Yet can find my way around a iPhone and Laptop without having to ask someone half my age.
Yes my bones make unusual noises at times, and I no longer heal as fast as I once did. But I count them as small prices to pay for all the knowlege and experience I have accrued.
(Gru being trolled since 1998, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:59, 4 replies)

War?
Have I got a war story for you!

Hmm?
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:59, 3 replies)

When some guy shouted at me to get off the bouncy castle
not because I was taller than the sign, but because my catheter bag was leaking
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:57, Reply)

If
Back to the Future was filmed today

Marti Mcfly would go back to 1982...

jesus.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:52, 4 replies)

People ask me if I lighten my hair.
They don't seem to have grasped the concept that as I get older, it just happens naturally.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:51, Reply)

where drinks were free... (for the bar staff anyway)
There was (maybe still is) an 80s night at Manchester Uni that I used to go to/work at called Club Tropicana.

I started going there in my first year, by the time I'd left working there (some 6-7 years later) it had become a retro night and they were playing stuff that was current when I'd started uni...
(littlestanjunior, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:42, Reply)

When you look at a B3TA QOTW about getting old...
...and the music that people are reminiscing about as being "Old School" are things you have dismissed as "new crap" or, worse, have never even heard.

So that the even older members here can moan about my musical taste, I like - Rush, Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, various other electronic stuff.

Hopefully this will start a nice recursive cascade, ending in posts about how those new-fangled bone percussion instruments aren't as good as when you just used to hit mammoths with rocks, ahh, memories.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:37, 2 replies)

The silhouette from "Tales of the Unexpected"....
...was the closest thing we had to porn in our day, along with random " crusty wank-mag hidden in a bush". Kids have missed out on this experience of discovery by the introduction of the Internet. Maybe we should be getting a mobile with browsers full of porn in the favourites and leaving them in bushes randomly about the area. It's for the best.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:37, 1 reply)

My sister told me the other day that that morning when she'd woken up, her first thought had been
"Oh it's raining - that will be good for the garden."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:30, Reply)

A whole list of things
Friends starting to get divorced rather than married.
Grey pubic hair.
Making old man noise when sitting down.
Not caring about the latest fashion.
Moaning about neighbours parties instead of gatecrashing them.
Buying a Volvo.
Laughing at teenage fashion.
Listening to Radio 3.
Selecting a pub to go to on the basis that it will be quiet.
Worrying about the state of the lawn.
( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:26, 2 replies)

I've reached the age where the weekend weather forecast worries me
if it looks like it might be too rainy to mow the lawn.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:25, 1 reply)

Two of them. True story.
I am thirty three. Last weekend I took two twenty one year olds back to my place. Two. My mate reckons one of them told her she fancied me. We'd been drinking all night. Then stuck outside for ages. There were no taxis. We were soaked to the skin. We were all very drunk indeed. Of course when we got in we all had to get out of our wet clothes, didn't we?

Then I went to bed. On my own.

Seriously, have you spoken to a twenty one year old recently?... fuck that.

I'm not just old. I'm about a thousand.
(eightAce, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:24, 3 replies)

I was asked not that long ago...
...if I had considered Just For Men or if I prefered the distinguished look.

I was less than impressed.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:22, 4 replies)

You know you are old when..
...young shopworkers no longer call you 'mate' and start calling you 'young man'
( Richard Shitheels, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:13, 1 reply)

The last time I went night-clubbing was about five years ago.
It was of course a drunken night - a reunion of sorts - a friend from university had come down to visit, and several of us decided to go to Camden because we still thought it was quite a cool place to go.

We ended up at The World's End nightclub; our student haunt, and gleefully remembered the way to the cloakroom, and the bar, and our favourite table.

But Christ it was shit.

For a start I didn't know ANY of the music they were playing. ANY of it.

And it was too loud. I grew up knowing that if it's too loud then you're too old, but this was just stupid - I remember it being loud but fuck - this was just ridiculous.

But then The Stone Roses came on - Waterfall. That beautiful, almost onomatopoeic opening riff, and I grabbed my friend excitedly - "COME ON!" I shouted right down his lug-hole - "LET'S GO AND HAVE SOME TO THIS!"

And it was then that I saw The Girl.

A very pretty little girl - she can't have been any more than 18. She was accompanied by an equally pretty little friend. The Girl was likewise shouting into her friend's ear excitedly. By the madness of nightclub acoustics, I overheard what she shouted to her friend over that beautiful riff.

"COME ON!" she shouted, "LET'S GO AND HAVE SOME TO THIS - I LOVE ALL THIS OLD SHIT!"

She lives under my patio now.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:12, 2 replies)

My cousin,
who is the same age as me, is a grandmother.

(granted this means that she is a grandmother at 37, but the fact that I could be a grandmother makes me feel old).
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:06, 4 replies)

Old mans noises.
Some will agree, some won't. That's the difference between being old, and young.

When you sit down, or get up, you go 'Hnnf', very quietly.

Lifting anything, same kind of thing.

Those are your old man's noises. Once you start, you will never stop. Well, until you die, of course.
(username failed moderation, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 14:02, 6 replies)

When you realise that...
... your cousins are in their fifties, most of your aunts & uncles have carked it (as have my parents, but I'd already noticed that), but most of all, your nieces & nephews are at uni or married with their own kids.

Also: knowing your kids won't ever have the 'pleasure' of spending hours doing research in real books in a musty old library, then having to copy out the information long-hand because the books are for reference only and can't be borrowed.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:59, 1 reply)

I'm 29. Today I was at my parents home and they made me go through all my clothes from when I was a teenager.
I rather hope that it was everyone who had terrible dress sense in the late 90s and not just me.
( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:56, 4 replies)

I used to fall off my mountain bike and get up
last time I fell off I needed physio :(
( zulu eh?, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:49, Reply)

"Jack, stop messing about and get out of that gentleman's way",
said a Mother to her young son on The Gatwick Express. I looked over my shoulder to see if I was in the way too. There was no one there. It took another 30 seconds or so to realise she had been talking about me.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:46, 3 replies)

Bouncy castle
"Shoes off lads," said the bouncy castle man, taking our money at the junior school fete.

We piled on and hurled ourselves about, careening off the walls, spanging around, bouncing off badly-drawn pictures of Disney characters, flying into each other and against other small children who went down like machine gunned. I was having a whale of a time until I realised that I was the only person left on the bouncy castle.

Then... Silence.

Someone had switched off the air pump, and eyes were upon me. The disapproving eyes of Mr Morgan, my former year head bore into me, and he beckoned me toward him. I sidled off the rubbery behemoth as best I could when the floor is sinking under your feet. Small children were pointing at me, and parents gave me that "You utter dick" look that I thoroughly deserved.

"Bit big for this, aren't you Coleman?" he said.

"Just a bit," I agreed, fleeing sans shoes to the coconut shy with the embarrassment of being told off by a former teacher making my ears glow red.

I was twenty-one, having left the junior school ten years previously, with a precocious wispy growth of facial hair and a white Top Man jacket. Twenty-one, and already too old for the bouncy castle.

On the bright side, at least he remembered my name.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:43, 10 replies)

"Does your Dad remember The Stone Roses at Spike Island? Then treat him to this compilation for Father's Day"
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:42, 5 replies)

I was travelling with a young colleague the other day
She looked at the picture on my rail photocard and asked when it was taken.

She laughed when I said "nineteen..."
(Mork, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:40, 2 replies)

Joe Scaramanga and I bumped into each other at the tube station one evening.
We'd both had shit days at our respective places of work, and decided that repairing to the pub was the most sensible plan.

We got in, sat down, and over several pints proceeded to discuss:

A: How the pop charts were full of shit.

B: How kids today have no respect.

C: The difference between our respective mortgage agreements.

... and then we compared mobile 'phones.

Looking over his shoulder, Joe said "You see that? That was my youth. Just leaving."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:40, 2 replies)

When I buy a CD or go to a club
and virtually all the songs are remixes of stuff I liked fifteen years ago
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:40, 2 replies)

I'm old enough to remember when the questions asked were original.
:)
( Muns, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:31, 6 replies)

Brit Awards 1996 onwards.
I just don't get music anymore.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:30, 2 replies)

Everything
I'm sorry to get all misty eyed, but honestly, the changes in my lifetime amaze me.

When I was a kid, there was no internet, and mobile phones seemed rare until I was in my teens. Once internet did arrive, it took about two minutes to load a page on our home computer, so if you wanted a bit of visual stimulation, the best bet was recording a few hours of late-night Channel 4 on the VCR and hoping for the best. I had a weekend job in Safeway, which doesn't exist anymore. At University, we didn't have to word-process essays, etc., because there weren't enough PCs to go around. I had a summer job in Woolworths, which doesn't exist any more.

My first proper job was working for a newspaper where we still printed on hot metal, and every so often blokes in overalls covered in soot would emerge from the basement when the rubber belt on the press caught fire. When I took that job, the company told me I didn't need an email address, as no one we dealt with used email.

I'm only 30.

Also, someone I was in the same year as at school is about to become a grandparent. But to be fair, that makes me feel sensible rather than old.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:29, 5 replies)

First
You lose hair, it falls from your head and grows on your back.

Next you get slow and fat.

Then you are more interested in sleeping, than shagging.

Finally, young folk just shit you.
( Ken Oath, Thu 7 Jun 2012, 13:28, 2 replies)