On The Passing of Youth
Image © Andrea Blackie
It only feels like 42 years ago that I turned 18. To mark my coming of age, my uncle and aunt gave me a solar-powered handheld calculator, a Texas Instruments TI-1766. Still got it, occasionally stumbling upon it when I’m looking for something else. And when I do - just as I did the day I was given it - I type 5318008 on the keypad before turning it upside down.
On the day of my birthday, a Saturday, my Mum and Dad took me out to dinner. I can’t remember where we went but almost certainly it was one of two places: the Justinlees Inn at Dalkeith or the Horseshoe Inn at Eddleston. The Justinlees had been a regular haunt of our family for many years, or so it seems to me now. Perhaps we only went there half a dozen times for pub lunches after visiting my maternal grandmother who lived in nearby Eskbank, but I do recall that the menu listed ‘pineapple juice’ as a starter. At the time - I’m talking about the early 1970s here, when I was 6 or 7, not my 18th birthday - I thought this preposterously glamorous and could never be persuaded to choose anything else. I was a strange child.
No, it was probably the Horseshoe Inn that we went to for my eighteenth. Once we got back to Edinburgh I got the old boy (not that my father was that old, five years younger than I am today) to drop me off at the Golf Tavern in Bruntsfield, where I had arranged to meet friends. This - the meeting friends at the Golf - didn’t differentiate the evening from any other Saturday during the previous 6 or 7 months (or indeed, during the following two years), simply that I was now able to go out without making some spurious excuse or breaking the law. Doubtless my Dad had seen through this pantomime from the start, but evidently it was news to my Mum, and she assumed this signalled the beginning of my descent into Sodom and Gomorrah.
In Hindu culture turning 60 years of age has special significance and is celebrated with the ceremony of Sashtiapthapoorthi which marks the halfway point of human life, ideally spanning 120 years. At the revered age of 60 a man is seen as having put youth behind him, fulfilled his commitment towards home, family, and society and, at this, the halfway mark, it is now a time for reflection and appreciation of the life he has been given.
Which all sounds like a plan, Stan. That estimated lifespan seems a bit optimistic but the solar-powered calculator might come in handy if the number gets too large. But I’m very lucky to have the time available to reflect and I truly appreciate what I’ve got, and not just the free bus travel throughout Scotland. Won’t be going to the Golf tonight, nor the Justinlees, nor the Horseshoe even, but for old time’s sake, I might have a glass of pineapple juice to celebrate. ¡Salud!