#87 ⚽️ Buckyballs, Orwellian tea, and being OLD as the hills 🫖
Popsicle
There are insects which can freeze over winter but thaw out in the spring and walk away. Angular, spiny creatures, like alpine stick insects and tree wetas. I’ve been frozen myself these last two months, unable to produce anything worth sharing. But now I’m thawed out, and although this newsletter has taken two months rather than two weeks: it’s now here. Apologies for the wait.
Old as the hills
I look old. Older than I actually am. Contributing factors: My beard went white early. And hairdressers are liars. They all told the kid me my hair was so thick I’d never go bald. And while a fat face might conceal age for a time, a skinny face accentuates nothing but the bones. Exactly no one sees the outline of a skull and thinks: what a young man.
A short catalogue of delightful assumptions:
- A colleague recently asked me whether I rocked out to Duran Duran as a teenager in the eighties, as he had. I was still a child in the eighties. My son Neko, at work with me that day, was delighted at this exchange, and continues to remind me: “Remember when that guy at work thought you were so old?”
- My wife Vic and I see the same local physiotherapist for occasional mechanical issues of the body. The last time Vic saw this physiotherapist he asked her, whilst trying to feign disinterest: “So, your husband: how old is he, exactly?” Assuming that perhaps my wife married for the money. Clarification: there is no money.
- A friend – himself past fifty – from taekwondo assumed for the longest time that I was older than him. He must have misheard “41” as “51” when he asked my age. He has said things to me like “You’re my inspiration” and “If you can do it, then I can too”.
These tales might be demeaning if I didn’t find them so damn funny. But also: such assumptions can be advantageous. A previous boss once assumed I was 48 when I was actually 38. I’m pretty sure I got extra work cred purely by virtue of that extra decade. It takes a long time to gain a decade of experience. It takes no time at all to allow people to assume you already possess it.