Life of Riley

Jim at 50

Back then, when our daddies and mummies came together in prodigious numbers, we were born. And golly, there were lots of us. To be born after the war made us a lucky bunch of so and sos. Times were good. There were more jobs going than you could poke a stick at. We had it all. The pill. Blue jeans. Long hair. Jimmi Hendrix. So we could afford to be confident and relaxed about our chosen lifestyle. With our great big ideas, music, drugs and full on revolutionary rhetoric, we were going to take over the world. We were going to show everyone that war was just plain wrong. Perhaps we were a bunch of know-it-alls, but we were bold and brazen enough, with our commie ways, to make it happen. Talk about gall: no wonder our parents couldn't stand us. So where are you now? Baby boomers, I'm talking to you. What happened to the good old days? I've just done an inventory. I've checked out the CV of the crowd I used to run with and find a deplorable lack of fidelity. Yesterday's radicals have certainly mellowed. In most cases you've taken this Me-generation thing really to heart and looked after Number One very well indeed. I don't begrudge you the rewards you have earned (I know you worked hard for what you've got) but whatever happened to the good old days? It makes me feel like a throwback. I am still stuck in the past. I am still doing what I was doing then. I am still marching after all these years. So as the years pass by — and the campaigns come and go — it's nice to know that we few who remain still remain. Not to make too heavy a point of it: we didn't sell out. I'm not trying to be a snotty nosed snob. These things happen. The fickle finger of fate is particularly hard on us commie types. Most fighters fall by the wayside only to have their place taken by another. How rare it is that someone stays the course. But fortunately, some do. So when one of our number makes it to 50 with the same disposition he had back then — with his faculties intact and fire still in his belly — it is cause for celebration. It's not the number of years I'm on about — golly, the lad's not "old" is he? — it's what he did with them that counts. And my mate Jim is still doing today what he did back then. No-one has actually seen his chin behind all that fur on his face in all this time, so he still looks the part, but in most other aspects he hasn't dated. Jim functions without a use by date. So what does today's aging ex-student radical do to stay in political shape? He works at it. He keep himself active. But most of all, he remains an incurable optimist. Dave Riley