Final Word by Paul Moore: The emperor’s new clothes

A hundred years ago when I was teaching English to GCSE students one of the poems they were expected to have studied was ‘Warning’ by Jenny Joseph.

In the poem the author ‘warns’ those reading it that the older she becomes the more outrageous her behaviour will become and that she will do her best to regress to types of childish behaviour which will bring her scorn from all who know her and, indeed, those who do not. The signal that she is about to enter that phase of her life is that she will begin to wear purple.

I tend to think of this poem as a new year is beginning, for two reasons. Firstly, because I wonder if it is my time to figuratively wear purple and secondly because I think I may have reached that age many years ago since much of my behaviour I suspect (hope) borders on the outrageous and unacceptable. Certainly a number of you felt so this year, not least the tennis club and the two-wheeled peddling warriors so I might be doing something right.

As I was pondering this end of year ritual an article appeared in a newspaper written by a female professor who has been doing her job to the best of her ability for many years and who, as she now turned 70, had realised that she needed to stop living to work and start working to live. No longer would she take on extra teaching, cover for absent colleagues, go on long-haul flights to persuade international students to study in the UK and, most importantly, no more would she research and write about things in which she had no real interest but which would gain good scores in the government review of university research and hence bring funding into the university. She had no intention of not doing a ‘good’ job but would now do the job she was paid to do and use the rest of the time to live before it is too late.

Many reading this who have worked all their lives and are still working well into what is generally considered to be retirement years will know exactly what she means. I was quite taken with her argument but the problem I have is I have no idea what ‘living one’s life’ actually looks like. Firstly, I considered that it might mean travelling to places not seen or places once seen and loved. The issue with this is that at this age I have no desire to undertake any long haul travel and am fairly sure that hours spent in the hell of airports does not constitute living under any definition of the word. Any stay in any exotic place would be undermined by the thought that the hell of a journey back was all one had to look forward to.

I then considered it might mean stopping saving money and starting spending it on the kinds of things one thought were always out of reach. I liked the sound of this and sat down to write a list which in my case involved things with various assortments of engines and wheels. I soon realised that the machines I really wanted I probably have already managed to procure over the years and do not get used enough anyway, while the more exotic vehicles are, at my age, almost certainly going to lead to my untimely demise hence defeating the expressed purpose of the exercise.

More importantly I still enjoy working so any notion that I will do less and live more is merely that – a notion. So this year I will simply take a leaf from the playbook of Jenny Joseph and buy the most outrageous clothes I can find, not worrying if I am mutton as lamb or indeed a pig in a blanket.

The only thing I can assure those interested is that these clothes will not be purple, but invariably black.

Happy New Year to all.