In this special book extract, Mervyn Cull tells how working in China uncovered a respect for age young people here could learn - but says reaching four score years still has many compensations
Age ambushed me on the main street of Roxburgh on a fine spring evening a few years ago. Two children, aged about 6, came hurtling down the footpath towards me on miniature bicycles. They were racing each other. As they were nearly abreast of me the girl of the pair shouted, "Watch out, old man!"
Old man? Old man? Me, an old man? If I had been carrying a walking stick I'd have been tempted to thrust it between her bicycle's spokes as she flashed by. No one had ever called me an old man before - never, in the 77 years it had taken me to reach that point. And I had never felt like an old man.
My thoughts at that moment should have been more charitable, of course. One of the truths of life is the young see age through a magnifying glass. I had learned that nearly 50 years earlier, when I was a new member of the New Zealand Herald leader-writing team. At an editorial conference I had referred to a local-body politician who was 49 as "an old man".
My colleagues, all of whom were at least 20 years older than I, burst into jocular protestations, which even my hasty amendment to "comparatively old man" did nothing to appease.
On that evening in Roxburgh I should have been prepared to acknowledge that I was an old man. I had had plenty of warning that I was running downhill way back in 1989. Young Chinese journalists whose grasp of English I was striving to improve, while simultaneously teaching them the ways of Western journalism, often invited me to eat with them at a cafe near the Xinhua offices where we worked. A happy lot, and so solicitous of my well-being that they would take my arm as we crossed the road. And I was only 60 then.
The contrast between their attitude towards age and that of young New Zealanders was obligingly, and amusingly, illustrated around that time when I received a birthday card from a niece in New Zealand. On the cover was: "In China old people are treated with the utmost respect and reverence. Here we are not quite so formal." Inside, the card read: "Happy birthday, Prune Face."
Chinese who were not so young were also warning me that tempus was fugit-ing. First, there was the elderly Chinese doctor I consulted on a chronic ailment. I travelled by public transport to the hospital where he worked. The buses I used daily were often so tightly packed with chattering humanity that boarding passengers had to be physically pushed into them. Most Western foreigners in China were assumed to have bags of money. I, on a modest Chinese wage, did not. As I was leaving the doctor's surgery he said, in a kindly way, "I suppose you have a car waiting for you?"
"Oh, no," I replied. "I'm travelling by bus."
"By bus?" He paused for a moment, then muttered, "Oh, well, perhaps somebody will stand up for you."
And then there was the senior cadre at Xinhua who welcomed me to her staff and said she was preparing a banquet for my 60th birthday. A kind old soul, she reminded me of my grandmother; but when she died I learned that she was two years younger than I.
Now, as an octogenarian, I'm relaxed about the epithet "old man" - or "doddery old fool", as no doubt some people prefer to call me. Besides, I've discovered that age has benefits that I enjoy. It certainly means that the flesh sags and bulges where I wish it didn't, that the hair grows wispier, that the frequency of trips to the doctor has become an embarrassment, that the sparkplugs of the brain need cleaning to speed up the connection with memory. However, age has also eradicated covetousness. I no longer envy the neighbour's house. His BMW, his launch, his tennis court and his pool I admire but no longer lust after; his ox and his ass would be of no use to me even if he gave them to me; and the stranger within his gates looks a bit dodgy anyway.
With covetousness has gone acquisitiveness, to be replaced by a sort of self-serving generosity. Possessions I have cherished for years have lost their meaning; books, souvenirs, collector's items amassed over a lifetime I no longer value, but others do. New clothes seem a waste of money; old ones are good enough, now that I spend most of my time around the home. For the suits and shoes and shirts that date back to my years in journalism, and that I'll probably never wear again, the op shops are welcoming repositories. On a cost - benefit analysis, the purchase of a new washing machine or refrigerator would hardly be worthwhile. The lawnmower has a few years left in it yet. The vacuum cleaner can be repaired.
Many possessions still fill the shelves, cupboards and drawers, but they too will go in time, as wider aspiration wanes, and comfort and security suffice.
At this time of reflection and contemplation, age is an amalgam of tolerance and irritability. For instance, the informality of young people in their dress and in their relationships with those of superior years or status used to annoy me. It does no longer. Unless they were close friends, I always addressed my elders as "Mister" or "Missis". There were no Bobs or Jacks or Shirls or Lindas among the editors I serviced - with one exception, Warren Berryman. On the day, in semi-retirement, I joined the part-time staff of his Independent Business Weekly, he asked me what I drank. I said Wilsons Whisky. He nodded his approval and commented that it was comparable to a good American bourbon. He said, "I'll get some in for you." Which he did. From then on a bottle of it stood in his drinks cabinet, available to me at any time. For an editor like that, "Mister" or "Sir" would somehow have seemed out of place. "Mate" or "Buddy" was surely more appropriate.
While I'm relaxed about the informality of youth today, I must admit that telephone calls and letters from people I have never met but who address me as Mervyn or Merv irritate me a bit. Until recently I thought nurses in hospitals had grown aware of the offence they give many old people when they call them by their Christian names. But I could have been wrong.
Newly admitted to hospital not so long ago, I was preparing to get into bed when a pretty young nurse breezed in.
"Hello," she said brightly. "My name's Sue-Ellen. What should I call you?"
"Oh, let's not stand on ceremony," I said. "Just call me 'Your Grace'."
She was clearly taken aback. Then she smiled again and said: "Oh, thank goodness you told me. I was going to call you 'Your Eminence'."
As she pulled back the bedclothes and plumped up the pillow, she added, "Better hop into bed now, Merv."
I forgave her the Merv in the delight of meeting someone who could respond to waggishness so consummately.
But many things still annoy me. Why, for instance, do all the marvels of science packed into computers and word processors come with keyboards from which the characters wear off? Why does toothpaste now come in plastic tubes that refuse to roll up as the contents diminish? Why do the simplest of purchases come sealed in plastic that calls for a can opener to penetrate it?
And why does television love funerals? Why do some speakers preface every statement with "in terms of" when 90 per cent of the time the phrase is unnecessary? Why do they say something "begs the question" when they don't understand the meaning of the term? Why do reporters on radio and television so often say "incidences" when they mean "incidents"? Et cetera, et cetera.
The young see age through a magnifying glass; the aged see it as a time for reflection and contemplation, a time to add the last brushstrokes to the painting of a life. But I wonder how the middle aged see us. Well, perhaps they see more life in us than we see in ourselves.
The sciatic pain was excruciating. I was leaning heavily on my walking stick as I hobbled down the main street of the town where I live to the rooms of my physiotherapist. In the row of familiar shop fronts something new confronted me. It was a shop window decorated with nothing but crimson velvet drapes and a bowl of white orchids. Over the footpath hung a sign, "Aphrodite's Dream", with a small R18 tucked in the corner. On the door of the shop was "Adults Only".
It was a sex shop; it had just opened for business. Standing on the footpath scrutinising the scene was a middle-aged Maori man. As I staggered past, he shouted, "Just what the old town needs, eh?"
"Whacko," I replied. "I'll have to have some of that."
At which he crossed the pavement and planted himself right in front of me, peering closely into my eyes. Deeply serious, he said, "Good on yer, mate."
The expression on his face that I had mistaken for concern was one of pure admiration.
In my heart I straightened up, tossed away my stick and skipped off down the street to cancel my appointment with the physiotherapist.
Loving All of It: Eminent New Zealanders Write About Growing Old
Edited by Gordon McLauchlan
RRP: $45.00
Random House NZ
Retired journalist Mervyn Cull was born in Palmerston North in 1929. He spent most of his career with the New Zealand Herald. He served briefly as chief press secretary to Prime Minister David Lange and spent two years in China with the official news agency, Xinhua. He has written three books and lives in rural Northland with his wife, Ann.
