There were six of us, all having cleared seventy. It was our monthly get-together to sort out the problems of the world by tapping into our lived experiences and telling tales that grew taller by the telling. The world was falling apart, the yanks were off to the Dark Side of the Moon whilst bombing Iran and threatening to abandon NATO. The Scottish Parliament election was imminent, and the blandishments offered by the six parties that aspire to be part of the next government were gaining no traction. Voting in the election will be as much against who the voter doesn't want as the candidate or party that they might have once supported. We had an ex MEP and two ex-Scottish Parliament candidates in our mix, so we had insider information. Our two Celtic fans were less buoyant than usual, and the two Kilmarnock fans more optimistic.
One of our number had just had a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA)test and threw it into the conversation; he was asked to circulate details of how to get the test. It had been part of my recent annual health check by the GP, and according to the others, my score was very low(good). The session was working for me, particularly as the pub had Timothy Taylor's Landlord on tap. We lapsed into a discussion of our ailments; one was recovering from an ankle operation and still using crutches, and another was on a strict diet to avoid becoming diabetic. Several had become carers for ageing parents or partners, and one was having to sell a holiday flat because a pension had been withdrawn. My new hip was old news. Ageing, unlike Scottish Government policies or CalMac ferries is fast-paced and not subject to cancellation.
Inevitably, we had half an hour of lacerating contempt for Trump. I mentioned that in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, there had been a daily Two Minutes of Hate against the opponents of Big Brother. Trump had elevated this with his daily Hour of Beautiful Hate for whoever was on his list to be insulted, annihilated or vaporised. Trump has also adopted a form of doublespeak to advance his authoritarian dystopian revision of the American Constitution. The Trump interlude morphed into a discussion of which podcasts or YouTube videos were worth a listen or a watch.
Another of our number had a part share in a horse that had to be put down after a fall. What are the odds on that? Our AI expert, being on trend, had bought a new phone to salivate over. He claimed he could edit a photograph in the style of famous painters. We challenged him to prove his claim. The waitress took a photo of the group, and I suggested Edvard Munch for the style - 30 seconds later, we were barely recognisable, just a table of sad has-beens. Maybe vaporisation is the answer now that assisted dying has been denied by the Scottish Parliament. Orwell's fiction is increasingly today's fact.
