I’m old. I discovered it today. I’ve suspected it for some time, but today I was provided definitive proof.

It’s not because my knees creak as much as Paris Hilton’s bed springs.

It’s not because I am working on a Bonnie Raitt, Susan Sontag streak of grey.

It’s not because I actually have Gregorian Monks chanting on my iPod.

I’m old because today, I tut-tutted a young girl on the street.

I had to return my videos so I got off the tube at Clapham South and along the high street there were three kids, I’m guessing twelve – thirteen years old. One was on a bike and he kept popping wheelies the way twelve-year-old boys do. His breaks had more squeak than stop. His friends, two girls, were walking along side him. One of the girls had Icelandic white blond hair and violent blue eyes and was at least a year away from filling out her training bra. She was holding a bag of crisps (potato chips) sprinkling them along the street. At one point she looked back at me, grabbed another handful of potato and Hanseled and Gretled it along the high street.

When the bag was empty she stuck it into the metal wire cage around a tree.

I couldn’t help myself. I called out to her, “Is that a trash can?”

She turned. “Wah?”

I think my saying trashcan is what got her attention.

“Is that a trashcan?” I fished the bag out from the wire and handed it to her. “Go toss it in the rubbish bin.”

She turned away from me, toward the rubbish bin, but she had to get a last word. She ripped the bag in half, let one bit flutter onto the street putting the twin into the bin.

I have to say, I was rather impressed. As non-verbal improv fuck you’s go, it was nice. Well done little slapper on the dole in training. Well done.

When she turned down her street, she turned around and looked at me, her eyes narrowed.

I narrowed mine back.

I was thinking, “Little bitch.”

She was thinking, “Fat cow.”

So yes. I am old. Any day I will start screaming, “In my day, we walked to school in our polyester bell bottoms tying yellow ribbons round the old oak tree!”

Sigh.

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