Terry Prone: Some of us want to be like Clint and remain in the saddle after 65

Clint Eastwood in a scene from his latest film ‘Cry Macho’; at 91, as well as directing, he found the energy and skill to ride a horse in the film.

SUNDAY

How can COPD Support Ireland run a radio ad mis-pronouncing the key word in their mission? The earnest voice urging sign up for an online seminar talks of pulMONNary problems. It’s PULLmonary, lads. PULLmonary.

The other ad that mystifies is the one where the voiceover artist’s mother falls up the stairs and ends up lying there until her carer comes the following day. That ad is so tightly edited that the voiceover says “she’s happy” about the mother, having just listed possibilities like leaving the front door open or forgetting to take her medicines. Maybe nobody notices because the idea of having their mother electronically monitored by (according to the ad) “specialists” is so thrilling to daughters…

MONDAY

My car has developed a slight stutter, but, as I explain to my son, it couldn’t have anything wrong with it because it’s just been serviced and come through its NCT with flying colours. He says this is the equivalent of believing you couldn’t have a stroke the week after you visited the GP.

TUESDAY

The New York Times runs a story about a travelling trash can that set off by sea from Myrtle Beach, California, and fetched up in Mayo, where Keith McGreal’s family spotted and adopted it. Keith emailed the local authority in Myrtle Beach which confirmed the trash can was theirs, although they didn’t enjoin him to return it. He, sensibly, set it up on the beach where he found it, to do what it was doing on Myrtle Beach before it got wanderlust. Fascinating, the way the sea lends random rubbish a sort of Coral Island aura of mystery and importance it never achieves out of the water.

Images posted by the City of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, of a trash can that floated across the Atlantic and landed in Mulranny, Co Mayo. Picture: City of Myrtle Beach Twitter

WEDNESDAY

Age Action today told the Oireachtas that mandatory retirement should be banned. Nat O’Connor, senior consultant in public affairs and policy at the organisation, begged an Oireachtas committee to “allow people to stay in their jobs for as long as they wish if they are fit to continue to work”. And so say all of us. Some of us would go a lot further and ask what the hell kind of country is it where only people working for enlightened private companies or who own their own place of employment are permitted to keep working after they hit 65 or thereabouts.

The right to work seems to apply only to people below that age, despite the physical and mental, not to mention financial benefits delivered by an active work life. Of course, some people by 65 are too tired to continue and, of course, anybody bored rigid by their job should have the right to get out in their 60s or earlier without going broke.

But for the want-to-workers in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s, the living patron saint has to be Clint Eastwood. At 91, the latest movie he has directed is moving into cinemas right now. Inevitably, as well as directing, he found the energy and skill to ride a horse in the film.

Best of all, the character he plays is in his 60s. Actors often get to play characters older than themselves but don’t often get to play characters younger than themselves and Clint is out on his own, playing a guy 30 years his junior.

THURSDAY

Why do media people have such a need for coercion? There was a wave of reaction this week wanting Nphet and the Government to quit giving generalised advice and move swiftly on to legal constraints. I don’t get this need for uniformity and rigid enforcement. Ordinary humans out there have been listening to Dr Tony Holohan and making behavioural judgements based on their own informed consciences. Dr Tony says look at your social diary and cut the encounters by half. That’s a reasonably simple way to play the odds and so the MD of my company last week sent around an email saying the Christmas dinner is kaput and that we’ll look to a New Year gig instead. Nobody among the staff came back with a shirty or distraught response. In fairness, nobody said they were relieved to get out of the gig, either. The general reaction was one of acknowledgement of the inevitable.

That acknowledgement is everywhere, although there’s a few noses we’d like to rub in it. Hence the messages pointing out that Nphet not so long ago were rubbishing antigen tests and look at them now. The annoyance over this issue is interesting. The people who most experience it pay much irritated attention to what Nphet says and believe that if they got two such essential points wrong, they can’t be trusted on anything. Their fury might be assuaged if Nphet raised their hands and admitted to not being omniscient, but there’s two chances of that — slim and none.

The rest of us aren’t that bothered. We buy antigen tests and use them intelligently. We did that before they gained official approval because you know what? We’re good at thinking for ourselves and acting in our own best interests. We wear masks and have panic attacks when we forget ours.

We get vaccinated, get our booster shots (if we’re sufficiently old and compromised), get our flu shots, and get on with a modified life with nothing more than a little irritation.

We don’t require Leo and Tony to be singing off the same hymn sheet. Democracy, at the last check, was about people not singing off the same hymn sheet. It was about Nphet advising and Government deciding. And the populace going along with it because the populace is pretty good at reading the runes. Right now, the runes, right across Europe, read pretty negatively. Other EU countries are enforcing local lockdowns.

Everything in your diary isn’t strictly necessary, and if skipping some of the encounters left you with a clear run to Christmas, how bad would that be? It’s the good side of gambling.

Damon Runyon said that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the only way to bet. Dr Tony Holohan’s historic lack of enthusiasm for masks is irrelevant to his current advice. It’s the only way to bet.

FRIDAY

My iPhone announces that over the previous week, I averaged 22 hours and 21 minutes per day of screen time. Unless I’m sleepwalking through the Dark Web, this is untrue.

SATURDAY

Heading home at lunchtime, crowds, guys selling green-hued scarves, and one road after another barricaded suggest a match might be about to happen. Eventually, a Cambodian-Irish guard and his pal talk to me at one of the blocked-off roads. “I just want to get home,” I explain with quiet pathos. They ask me where home is. I tell them. “If we let you past the barriers, will you be able to get home?” one of them asks.

Maybe I overdid the pathos if he thinks I mightn’t be able to find Portrane. I do, though, and Ireland beats New Zealand too, so it’s a win/win.