Twatter, Faceplant, Instabook or Snipchat, Jesus, I'm getting old!

It's all such bloody nonsense!

I turned 40 recently...well two years ago if I’m honest. But since then a worrying thing has started happening. 

I’ve always considered myself young. You know, like as in, up to date with the latest bands like, or in tune with the latest trends like init though, like!

But my troubles started two summers ago and ended this week with three instances total that have caused me to conclude I may not be as ‘young’ as I once believed myself to be. 

Incident one.

I was walking home from a meeting at the office in 2013, my 40th year. Now to be fair I was dressed in a suit which does always give the impression of one being older than one actually is. Shut it, it does! 

So there I was walking along the pavement when ahead of me appeared a group of teenagers on skateboards. Now the first thing that made me feel old was the immediate thought that flooded my brain. 

Yes I experienced a hitherto unfelt emotion for this particular situation, a feeling of utter dread. ‘Oh god, teenagers’, were the words that leapt to the fore-front of my brain. 

I felt dumbfounded and I almost stopped in my tracks whilst cold sweating as I simply couldn’t understand why I felt as though there were suddenly a vast societal chasm that somehow made me feel different towards these bastar...I mean, young people. Then it hit me. 

You see it was the first time I realised that I probably looked very different to them that I had ever considered myself to look in the past. Up until that point I had thought myself to be older sure, more mature well obviously, but regardless still of their demographic, perhaps an older sibling type of thing. Of course the reality was that as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I probably looked more like one of their dads. 

But onwards I stumbled towards this group of 'children' as they had rapidly become, desperately trying to convince myself that I was still young and able to maintain a vision of youthful cool. As I passed what surprisingly quickly had become hateful creatures, one of them accidentally slipped on his skateboard which in turn then shot towards me narrowly missing my ankles. Impressively quickly and quite genuinely the kid then exclaimed “Oh sorry, sir”.

Now I’m a peaceful man. It’s unheard of for me to get physically angry and as I may have mentioned before in this blog I abhor violence of any kind. But this kid, oh he caused such ructions within my brain he was very lucky to survive the immediately following 30 seconds without an ice pick forced through his skull. You see I immediately thought how feckin dare this kid ‘I’m not a sir, I’m not old enough to be his dad, or his teacher’. 

But what didn’t compute was the realisation my brain had quickly leapt to, the kid clearly subconsciously thought I was old enough to be a ‘sir’, or his dad and that he was absolutely right. 

The second impulse that shot through my brain nearly caused a subdural meltdown, ‘oh what a good kid and very polite’ I thought. This made me even angrier as not only did the kid view me as old enough to be his dad, but he’d forced me into a very old and arguably parental reaction to his good manners. Damn this kid!

Incident two

As a man, as still a young man, one always likes to believe that you’ve still got it. 

You know, it, the ‘je ne ses quoi’, the ability to flaunt what you’ve got and to attract a shag. 

You want to know you can still thrust out your chest and stand tall in the belief that you continue to have all the sexual magnetism of Brad Pitt, the comic timing of Will Ferrell and the intellect of Stephen Fry. Even if in reality and in all honesty you should replace those three with Jerry Brownlee, John Key and that dizzy bird off The Bachelor!

As a man, we all want to believe that if we’re single and if we wanted to; we could go out there and conquer the 'trap' of our dreams. 

Of course if one is married, one most definitely wants to believe that when the other half becomes so mind numbingly irritating that one is forced to inadvertently bludgeon them to death, that in the meantime before being hunted down by the police and rightly banged up for 40 years, you could still trap the shag of your dreams. 

Now some people are fond of antiques, enjoying perhaps the curves of the more traditional and experienced.  

However for most men, and I’m going out on a limb here, a younger model, one that is unlikely to break, is the fantasy trap of choice. 

You certainly wouldn’t want a relationship with this ‘younger model’, no that’d be simply awful, as you’d likely quite suddenly realise you had as much in common as Tariana Turia and Lady GaGa.  

No just a trap simple as that, and a fantasy one at that. 

So goes the story of incident 2. 

In order to set the scene properly at this point I should explain that I’m gay. I don’t believe that makes the slightest bit of difference to my reactions as a man to ‘totty’, if I can call it that. But it does mean that my ‘totty’, has pecs and abs, as opposed to breasts and ovaries. 

So one Sunday afternoon recently when it remained warm outside and summer's embrace was still upon us, I was busying myself in the garden with the usual chores of pool cleaning or hedge trimming whilst the husband was working, when I heard a ruckus. Such a ruckus in fact, that investigation was merited. 

On getting to the front garden it became obvious that the noise that had piqued my interest was a game of some description afoot in the street. 

What game I have no idea as what became very apparent was that the participants were around 12 shirtless 18 year old what can only be described as 'athletes', supple of movement, firm of body and shiny of sweat. 

Now I don’t care whether you’re gay or straight, most at this point would have dribbled uncontrollably. Straight men would have wished what was on display they still had, women would have become weak at the knees and simply collapsed such was the view; indeed I seriously struggled for breath for a second or two and I’m rather ashamed to admit I may have even debated where I could hide to watch for longer. 

But then it hit me. I was 41, it was way wrong and I certainly couldn’t be seen staring like a dribble faced looney as I may have been able to get away with in years past. 

No, I was forced to once again admit to being old enough to be their dad and as much as it pained me, the moral high-ground it was to be, the mature approach if you will. 

I dragged myself away from what was an utterly majestic sight back to my chores and responsibilities of advancing age...after another minute anyway...or five. 

Incident three

I love technology. I believe that if we don’t keep up with advances in technological science and adapt we will most certainly be left behind. 

So my business is entirely digitised. My office has barely a piece of paper in sight and when I’m asked for advice it is almost always to make use of cloud systems and have the ability to access your data anywhere at any time. Only in doing so will you be able to make sensible, quick and profitable business decisions. 

In my social life I enjoy a good bit of Facebooking of an evening too. Catching up with friends and messaging to make sure I’ve got every bit of news and haven’t missed someone’s birthday or important family news. 

Recently I’ve even been trialling Facebook marketing too in an attempt to see whether it really is only a social network, or if it has any value from a business perspective. I remain unconvinced to this point, if you’re interested. 

But, and here’s the thing. Here’s the ‘nod’ to the title of this missive. I can’t get my head around other social media. 

I don’t understand how anyone can relate any form of sincere message in the 168 character limit Twitter has for posting to your Twat list, or whatever it’s called.
It’s weird to me and suggests a vacuous nonsense that only air headed celebrities would use. 

But then I know that Stephen Fry and Jeremy Clarkson are avid Twitterers and I’m a huge fan of both so I’m left confused, like an old person. 

I downloaded Instagram the other day. As a result and unbeknownst to me I apparently asked 687 people to ‘follow’ me. 

The result was I was asked by several of those 687 who on earth I was and ultimately I got so mad with how baffling the damn thing was I uninstalled it again and so I’m left confused, like an old person. 

I recently discussed Snapchat with a friend and as far as I can work out you take photos to send to someone that they can only see for a pre-determined period of time before it is then deleted and disappears into some technological abyss. 

I’ve always taken photos because I want to remember the moment or the event that caused me to take them. 

I just don’t see why a service that allows you to send a memory to someone via a system that immediately then deletes that memory, would be of any use whatsoever. 

But it seems I’m wrong as Snapchat is massively popular among the kiddies. That youth that I’ve now had to admit I’m no longer part of. And so I’m left confused, like an old person.

I have Tumblr on my tablet but again I don’t really understand what to do with it. I get to ‘follow’ certain blogs and see pictures and photos that the owner of that blog believes I might be interested in seeing. 

As a Land Rover fan I typed into the search box of Tumbr ‘Land Rover Defender’. It seems I’m able to access at least three dozen blogs of people who also enjoy, or in some cases have a worrying level of fascination for, Land Rover Defenders. 

But if all I wanted was pictures of my favourite car I could just perform a google images search. So once again, I’m left confused, like an old person.

So there you go, I’m old it’s official. Sooner or later I’ll be struggling to drink soup through a straw and confusing my cats for ISIS terrorists sent to assassinate me. 

And it’s all the fault of the young I say, they’re all bastards! What with their Twatter, Faceplant, Instabook or Snipchat, I’m left confused, like an old person!!

Hope you enjoyed the latest of my blog entries and please feel free to comment and keep coming back for more.

Till next time,

Gordy