The Sunday Times Magazine • 59In the winter I like to go shooting, which
means putting on a heavy coat, a heavy
jumper and heavy trousers and then, while
carrying a heavy gun and a bag full of heavy
lead, walk up a steep hill through mud so
deep and cloying that my already heavy
wellingtons soon feel like rubberised
boulders. And sometimes, when I watch
friends who I know to be my age boinging
about like spring lambs while I pant and
wheeze and cough up lumps of actual bone,
I’m often overwhelmed with a need to load
my gun and put them out of my misery.
It seems 1960 was a vintage year to be
born, and as a result I’m the same age as
Jonathan Ross, Sean Penn, Ian Hislop, Bono,
Damon Hill, Gary Lineker, Hugh Grant,
Kenneth Branagh, Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Antonio Banderas, David Duchovny and
Colin Firth. And every time they appear in
the newspapers I look at their pictures
wondering who’s faring better than me.
All of them are, if I’m honest. Except
perhaps Jonathan Ross. And that irritates
me. I’m in a battle here with Kenneth
Branagh and, though we’ve never met, you
can be assured he’s in a battle with me. And
he knows he’s winning. He can look at a
photograph of me and then himself in the
mirror and he’ll think, “Yup. I’m in the lead.”
Recently, I saw photographs of Charles
Dance emerging from the sea with his newgirlfriend. I was happy for him as he looked
so happy and healthy, then I saw that he was
75 and suddenly I hated him, not just slightly
but on a molecular level. Because I’m fairly
certain I won’t look like that at his age. I won’t
look like much of anything at all in fact,
because I’ll be landfill. Along with my garden.
And my house? Ah, that’s another story.
They started building it in the autumn of2019 and I thought then that it may be a
foolish endeavour because how long would
I have left to live in it? The builders said it
would all be done by May of 2021, but
because they are builders, here we are in the
spring of 2022 and the drive’s still full of
vans and the garden’s still full of trenches
and I still can’t hear myself think because
of all the power tools. There’s a very real
possibility that I’ll be like Brunel; dead
before the builders realise my dream. Or
that I’ll have to get them to install some
kind of stairlift before they go.
How much time do we have left and
what will we be able to do with it? Those
are the questions. And why do these
imponderables prey so heavily on our
minds? I guess it’s because we struggle to
cope with the hope. When we know the end
is coming, that hope is replaced by despair
and somehow that’s always easier. Maybe
that’s why people on their death beds are so
calm. Or maybe it’s the opiates. We don’t
know the answer to that one either.
David Bowie, however, once wrote
something pertinent on the subject: “Time,
he’s waiting in the wings. He speaks of
senseless things. His script is you and me,
boy.” He probably thought he’d be able to
enjoy the royalties from this clever song in
his old age. But as we all know, he ran out of
REX, GETTY IMAGES, BACKGRID time and never got there n
The turning
62 club1 Sean Penn
2 Damon Hill 3 Hugh
Grant 4 Colin Firth
5 Ian Hislop
6 Antonio Banderas
7 David Duchovny
8 Kenneth Branagh
9 Jean-Claude Van
Damme 10 Bono
11 Gary Lineker
12 Jonathan Ross.
Below: Charles
Dance at 7510 126 82 49 115 71 3