Living, not waiting

 

THE END OF WAITING FOR THE END

We've got into the habit of watching an episode of some old sitcom while we eat our dinner. Not sure if laughing helps the digestion or not, but maybe it takes the mind off some of my poorer culinary efforts and allows them to seem more palatable.

This daily routine has led to us working our way through series after series of several comedies from the past, including Ab Fab and Dinnerladies. The latest one to be polished off was Waiting For God. Five series and two xmas specials. Originally broadcast in the early nineties, it hasn't dated too badly - what's changed most is the person watching them.

For those who don't know, the series is set in Bayview Retirement Village, a place where older people come to live out their so-called twilight years and await the inevitable end.  There's a lot of funerals. The central characters are Tom and Diana, who find themselves next door neighbours, and the plot revolves around the development of their relationship and how they take on the world around them.

Tom is an ex-accountant, who's lived a mostly boring life and now compensates by indulging in elaborate fantasies. So he's frequently off climbing Everest or escaping from Colditz, without leaving the comfort of his own conservatory. He is cheerful, optimistic, positive.

Diana is ... not. She's had an exciting life as an international photo journalist and now, without that role to give meaning to her life, is waiting to die.  But while she's still around she delights in making life miserable for all around her. She is abusive, curmudgeonly, negative.

This unlikely pair gradually form an alliance (which will later turn into a sexual and, eventually, romantic relationship) to take on the injustices they see around them, mostly to do with the manager of Bayview, the egotistical and materialistic Harvey Bains. The couple are frequently battling to prevent some money grubbing scheme of Bains, or making his life generally unpleasant. In return he is always looking for ways he might be rid of them, especially Diana.

Add in a few other interesting characters (notably Basil, the octogenarian sex machine) and sub plots, and the series had enough to maintain itself across those five series without too often suffering a dip in quality, largely due to the excellent performances of Graham Crowden and Stephanie Cole as the troublemaking oldies. It made me laugh, which is what you ask for most from the genre.

When it was originally broadcast I was in my late thirties. I enjoyed it then, or I wouldn't have wanted to revisit. At the time it made a change to see older people being portrayed as strong central characters, the people with decency, while those of my generation were frequently idiots, deceitful and venal, generally lacking in understanding of what they themselves would become one day (if they were lucky).

But now I'm viewing from a different perspective.  While I hope it's a while before I find myself in any sort of retirement/care home environment (although we can never say what the future holds, as this year has sharply demonstrated), but I'm certainly a lot nearer to that stage of my life than I was thirty years ago.

Now I can view Tom and Diana as role models, for Tom's optimism and determination to enjoy life, and Diana's bloodymindedness and refusal to accept the conventional societal role of 'oldie'. Isn’t it essential that I do, for what's the alternative?  A mix of the fictional Tom and Diana seems a decent template for getting on with retirement. Have adventures, be daft, push yourself a bit, push others a lot more, and stand up to the bastards in life - especially the ones who think the old should be sidelined (although it's hard to blame younger people getting angry when you see how so many of my generation selfishly voted in the two referendums). I'm not going to hang around for anyone's god, but I will enjoy myself.