Darth Vader Has Arthritis!

It's true, the man in black has all the symptoms the average eighty-year-old has! You heard me right: DARTH VADER IS EIGHTY! Well, nearly.

Of course you have every right to point out that he is a fictional character, you smartarse! But I am of course talking about David Prowse, the body of Vader, (the voice was done by James Earl Jones, I think.)

The story goes that the film producers realised that there were no black characters in the film, so they dubbed Prowse's voice to make him more "ethnic". Shame that they had to choose the most evil character, one who wears black and is a slave to the master in the film to give a black voice to! But I think the real reason was that James Earl Jones's voice has gravitas and power, whereas David Prowse sounds like a west country hill billy farmer. There will now be millions of people (lonely men) who will disagree, and scoff at my feeble grasp of the biblical struggle of Star Wars, and I shall immediately bow to their superior knowledge. I have never seen a Star Wars movie from beginning to end. I can't be bothered reading up on it as I have one of those useful things called... a life! So, sorry if the info I have given so far is incorrect.

I saw a programme the other evening where David Prowse was being interviewed, not because he was Darth Vader, but because here in Britain in the seventies he was the "Green Cross Man". If you're not familiar with this character, he was dressed in Lycra and looked like he had just escaped from a Brazilian Mardi Gras, but he spoke like a west country hill billy farmer!

He was part of a road safety campaign and shouted things at children who didn't cross the road properly, like, “You blockhead don't you know it's not safe to cross here, oo arr!" (I'm not sure if he actually said the "oo arr" bit, but he could have done).

I was shocked to see how the man looks now. He has had a hip replacement and quite bad arthritis, and looks considerably smaller than he did. He walks with a stick and looks quite old and frail, mainly because he is old and frail. I wouldn't have known who he was if the presenter had not introduced him, he looks so different.

But that's the thing; we don't see our own ageing process but when, if you are my age (nearly thirty!) and you encounter someone from school that you haven't seen for years, you think, "he looks old now", not realising that he has the same thoughts about you.

I do try to keep fit, but I know I'm just maintaining my fitness level as I wont get any fitter at my age. My hair has gone snow white, and like all snow falls is starting to melt. I have all the body parts I started out with, with the exception of my tonsils, which will no doubt be a subject for another blog.

Age is a strange thing, as up until a certain age you worry about the ageing process, then without warning one day you wake up and think what the hell, and embrace it. There's a certain amount of stoicism and a certain amount of smugness about being middle-aged. I must be one of the lucky ones as I haven't yet encountered any illnesses all my life, and at the moment all my bits are working fine. I haven't reached the age yet where, as Billy Connolly says, you can no longer trust a fart!

A doctor once told me that women are fine until they reach forty, then they have nothing but problems because of, as he put it, "bad plumbing". A friend of mine agrees, saying she always has a spare pair of knickers in her handbag just in case she is taken by surprise by a cough! Another female friend says that one cup of tea/coffee is equal to four visits to the toilet!

But when you are young, you don't ever think any of these things will ever happen to you. In fact at nineteen years old I knew that I was immortal and invincible, I have had to revise this notion quite a lot over the years. The things you worry about when you are young are irrelevant when you get older and the things you worry about when you are older are irrelevant when you are young.

When you are young, pensions and savings are something to think about later, When you are middle- aged they things you should have thought about sooner.

When you are young, you know the girl that you were madly in love with? The one with the perfect smile and breasts, with long hair and breasts, who had charm, grace, and breasts? You know the one her who you swore you would end your life over when she spurned you? Well, imagine when you meet her in her fifties with three grandchildren (one of each) all screaming and crying as she struggles around the supermarket. Her long hair is now thin and bleach-dyed, forty cigarettes a day have given her the complexion of a cadaver, and she now has a glandular problem that means her once lithe body is bloated. Her beautiful breasts, that you only noticed in passing, now look like two dowsing sticks and are long, thin and pointing to the floor. Also, the years of being married to the hunk of the school who all the girls wanted to go out with have taken there toll. He is a man who worked for a year when he left school then gave it up because it wasn't for him. He had a string of affairs and drank all the money she earned doing mind-numbing part-time jobs. Well, I bet she would be up for a date with you now! And, girls, for the female equivalent, see her husband!

When you are a young man, sex is all you can think about. Some men love porn, whether it be films or magazines. A friend of mine who is the same age as me says that when a Screwfix brochure comes through his letter box, it has the same effect on him that a "wank mag" used to have on him!

I used to love my nights out with the lads, chatting to girls and drinking until the early hours. We used to chat about everything and anything. Now a night in with a good book, in bed with a cup of green tea and honey and a couple of slices of toast is my idea of heaven. I don't want to hear anyone talking!

They say that youth is wasted on the young, but it's just not true, I work with young people all the time, and most of them, like I did, love the freedom of their youth. There are some people that are old before their time, I have known people in their early thirties acting like they were ready to retire.

Age has a devastating effect on the way some people look. I know that I don't look like the younger version of me, years of abuse have taken their toll, no doubt.

But there are people like Bruce Forsythe or, when he was alive, Fred Astaire, who never look any older. That is because they always looked old! Look at old footage of Brucie in The Generation Game in the seventies, and he looks older then than he does now. The same can be said about Fred Astaire, look at him in the film Top Hat and Tails, shot in the 'thirties and he looks the same age in The Towering Inferno, in the seventies. He looked the same in both of them.

Then there's the heart-throbs that all the girls love when you are young, you know, the ones you are really jealous about and hate. But you secretly wish you looked like them, because your girlfriend the girl who is GOING OUT WITH YOU! fancies them. This drives you crazy with jealousy and anxiety, even though she is GOING OUT WITH YOU!

You can't help but gloat when they appear on the TV thirty years later, bankrupt and looking like Yoda! (another Star Wars reference there for the lonely men who are reading this blog by accident, thinking it was a Star Wars forum).

But, whatever you think about getting older, I can assure you of this, getting older is far better than the alternative!