Pushing Ninety

I don't watch television. It repeatedly redefines
misinformation, and with each repeat defines idleness.
There is already too little thought in the speculations
of the speech-based radio that I sometimes listen to.

But recently I enjoyed one programme, where the pleasure
lay in the editing of the visuals as much as the subject, Alan Bennett.
The title 'Alan Bennett At Ninety' said it all in a world
where leaders much younger than that age go insane
every time they to take to the media, in stage managed events
where the leaders ill chosen words are as natural as his staff
taking the blame for every error of judgement he makes,
to make the leader seem all the more immaculate.

Mr Bennett, playwright, actor, author, diarist, memoirist,
had over the years mined a well lived life for anecdotes
that would outlive their time, once more gave the BBC
an hour of his most composed self, allowing himself
to be shown as a two fingered typist, typing new writings.   

The dryness of what he said, and stillness of his room
were odd at first. It took some time to reflect on how well
he depicted, without declaring it, how asexual he was.

To be that still, that reflective, and yet so evidently alive 
is something I will be aspiring to in my old age.