As I Get Older

Janet and John taught me to read; Ladybird taught me about the world. The first Ladybird book was published in 1914 and the hardback format, comprising 56 pages (chosen so that book could be produced from a single 40 inch by 30 inch sheet) has been a familiar and comforting sight to millions of British children. That format has gone the way of many things that the early books were written about, like steam trains, but old style Ladybird books remain highly collectable, and it is probably for that reason, and to tap into a seam of nostalgia, that the imprint has been revived with a series of books for adults.

Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups are written and produced in a style that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who read Ladybirds as a child. The content, although presented in that familiar manner, is very different from what we remember. The illustrations may have been taken from earlier editions, but the text, while it mimics the manner of the old, is a parody...or is it? Well, yes of course it is a parody, but one that is just one step removed from the truth. As is so often the case with the absurd or the surreal, it needs to have enough of a root in reality to both amuse and make its point.

I bought Val How it Works: The Husband (Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups) for Christmas, and at 56 pages of large print text and alternate pages of illustrations, it isn't a challenging read, nor a long one, but it is a book that genuinely makes you laugh out loud (there are plenty of books that claim to make you laugh out loud, in my experience very few do). And the main reason it makes you laugh (well, made me - and Val - laugh) is because some of it is uncannily accurate. The husband, it says, "has a very big memory. He can remember football scores (and) all his old car number plates," however, "he cannot remember what his wife asked him to bring back from the shops. This is because his brain is full up, not because he was not listening." 

Easy to remember.

There is a grain of truth here; research suggests that women speak about 20,000 words a day, while men get by on 7,000. Men's brains may not be full up, but there's a possibility that after a certain point, we run out of temporary memory because we cannot assimilate that many words in a day.

Difficult to remember

Apparently, the husband "finds some things very difficult. Being wrong is one of these things." Amen to that, although I somehow think that most people, man or woman, husband or wife, find being wrong difficult, although there is I suppose a corollary, that being wrong should be quite easy, considering how we usually get better at things with practice.

While I find that as I get older I become increasingly like my father (I think most men, for better or for ill, eventually start to morph into their fathers), I have not inherited his DIY skills. Now my father was a man who, coming from a generation for whom 'make do and mend' was a way of life, was adept at most jobs around the house. He was a fairly decent woodworker for instance, making bookcases and frames for home made secondary glazing, skills which I have singularly failed to inherit. I have always felt (and you may consider this a self serving justification if you wish) that DIY is a task which is more likely to be performed successfully if you have the right tools, but given that the cost of buying the right tools might be an expense that cannot be justified for the occasional task, it is often more cost effective to pay someone to do a job. An alternative, as suggested by The Husband , is to improvise, thus a screw driver may be pressed into service to open a jar of pickled onions and a shoe may be used as a substitute for a hammer when putting up pictures. In my experience there are few jobs that do not require the services of a bradawl, while I also find that a screwdriver is probably the most versatile  tool a man can own...sometimes it can even be used for tightening screws.

Men, as the book accurately tells us, find it difficult to talk about their feelings. If you gather a group of men together they will talk about anything but their feelings, even if this means talking about a subject they know nothing about (not that any of them will admit such ignorance). When I have met up with some of my old friends, Val will ask me later about their wives and children; on most occasions I have to admit that beyond being able to confirm that they are OK, I know little or nothing. It is comforting to know that I am by no means unique in this respect, because our invaluable guide suggests that this is typical of the husband.

The Husband also reveals that as he grows older, "he starts to make lots of funny little noises," for instance he "pom-pom-poms as he goes from room to room." I have to confess I do make odd noises at certain times; sitting down or getting up, reaching up for something or just randomly. I also find myself singing (reciting might be a better term for it) random snatches of songs. This does seem a uniquely male trait; I have never heard a woman do it, but I have worked with many men who, in an otherwise quiet office, would suddenly burst into song. It would always be the same song, always the same line - I do it myself, it's a sort of verbal tic, or as the book says, is done to prove you are still there.

As well as this book, I find increasingly that there are things I read, or quizzes that I complete, that prove that as I get older I am becoming more set in my ways and at the same time (and somewhat contradictorily) slightly eccentric, but I am comforted by the fact that while on the face of it some of the character traits described in this book may be thought odd, I am obviously not unusual in exhibiting them. I was going to say that I'm normal in displaying them, but then I remembered that just because something is common or not unusual, it is not necessarily normal.

One of the things that I have always prided myself on is my memory. Increasingly however, I find that it is becoming an unreliable, if not hostile, witness. The only succour I can take is that again, I am not unusual, as this list proves, as apart from any others I find numbers five and ten to be particularly true.

To address number five I have a little notebook for things I need to remember. Now if only I could remember where it is, I'd be laughing.