IT’S a shame people can’t grow old gracefully – or disgracefully, whichever course nature and genetic imperatives have prescribed for them.
In other words, just accept what is coming to you. You can’t really fight against it. Not effectively.
That otherwise brilliant poet Dylan Thomas sought to deceive us all when he urged …
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

A whole industry has grown up around Age Defiance, with people being urged to run all sorts of useless creams into their skins, and to take out gym subscriptions in their seventh decade.
Then there is the vile cosmetic surgery industry, which sees millions of women (and increasingly men, too) go under the scalpel for vanity’s sake every year.
And let’s not even get started on hair colorants. Oh well, just a bit…
Paul McCartney. All that money, all that barnet-dyeing and he still has hair like a dinner lady.
Recent pictures of Paul show him looking not at his best. Haggard. Not the Paul of the luminous good looks that everyone remembers from the mid-Sixties.
He was ill-advised to have his hair cut into a moptop of the sort he sported so stylishly when the world was a much more innocent place – and he was 40-odd years younger!
The style doesn’t look right, framing his craggy, fleshy face. No wonder people have been mocking him for trying to cling on to his youth.
As for the ever-changing colour of his hair … orange, brown, purple-ish at one stage. It’s frightful.
I trust he'll get it fixed in time for his headlining appearance in Liverpool for Capital of Culture
But I hope Macca hasn’t been too upset by all the bitching that's gone on about his appearance.
That's par for the course if you are a living icon of British culture, and it could have been far worse.
I mean, consider the case of Julie Goodyear, the former Coronation Street actress, recently featured in “You Can’t Sack Me, I’m Famous” on TV.
I remember her a few years back being interviewed by the columnist Carole Malone.
Carole didn’t warm to Julie’s diva pretensions, so she wrote in her article that Julie had “more facial hair than all of The Dubliners put together”. Ouch!
The reason I am writing about this is that I – and I alone – might be the sole person in history to be growing younger in appearance with each passing year.
I mean, look at the picture of me on this blog. It was taken earlier this summer, when I had just turned 50.
I look so young in it … if a bit camp, possibly. Oh well, I was very VERY drunk when it was taken … in a bar called Hooters in Krakow.
But my anti-ageing tendency is strange. Each night as I go about my social life in New Brighton, people come up to me and tell me I look younger.
Honestly, several folk have said that recently, in the smoking grotto of Hell’s Waiting Room and in Tallulah’s bar, including … Commuting Mitch, Joolz, Annette Kalms, Corky, Duncan Kindlyface, Dr Gyggle, Litherland Lou, and even my sister Princess Stephanie of Wigan.
They all said I was (a) losing weight (b) looking younger and (c) seemed in a much happier and more optimistic mood these days.
They put it all down to my continuing romantic relationship with Posh Boots. Maybe that has got something to do with it. She certainly makes me feel happy.
But also I’ve been out running each night and I think the change in my appearance is mainly down to that.
Running doesn’t merely cause you to shed the pounds, it also lifts your spirits, and both of those things are rejuvenating.
Well, it has certainly worked for me. I’m beginning to believe all the flattery and I am thinking of forming a boy band with some of my pals.
We’ll call ourselves Bad Gav and the Hellbastards.

Now. On the subject of being in good spirits, our Bards of New Brighton meeting in the Little Brighton Inn, Rownson Street, the other night, was a very jolly affair.
It was a full house, and several people brought me poems for the anthology about Wirral places we are planning.
And two fellas, “New Brighton Newbie” and “Smokehouse”, came along just on the strength of being regular readers of this blog.
Several poets came over from Liverpool for the night and we also had three singers doing spots.
The next Bards meeting is at the Little Brighton, Rowson Street, New Brighton, on Monday, 5 November (bommy night, as we used to call it in Wigan), starting at 8.30pm.
If I remember I will bring some treacle toffee and some parkin cake for everybody.
Till next time,
Love...and ...
Keep the Faith!

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit