If you were brought up in Western Europe you probably learnt at quite an early age that the "Midd... In the Middle Ages - a per

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Submitted by admin on Mon, 2005-12-05 12:00.

If you were brought up in Western Europe you probably learnt at quite an early age that the "Middle Ages" in Western Europe were preceded by the "Dark Ages" and followed by the "Renaissance" and the "Modern Period". The "Dark Ages" in Britain are usually considered to have begun with the withdrawal of the last Roman Legionaries by 442 A.D. and to have ended on October the 14th 1066 when William of Normandy won the Battle of Hastings and conquered the Anglo Saxon Kingdom of King Harold.

Other bits of Europe stayed where they were until May the 29th 1453 when the Byzantine Empire was definitively overrun by the Ottoman Turks and Constantinople was captured. The "Early Modern Period" began for the English in 1485 on August 22nd at about half-past-five in the afternoon, just in time for tea, when Henry, Earl of Richmond, beat Richard the Third at the Battle of Bosworth Field and became Henry the seventh. The Scottish didn't arrive in the "Early Modern Period" until much later when their King James the Sixth was proclaimed King James the First of England on March the 24th 1603.

The Spanish got to the "Early Modern Period" on January the 2nd 1492 when the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada and completed the "Re-conquest" of the Iberian Peninsula. However, the Spanish didn't arrive in the "Modern Period" until 1975 when, on the 20th of November, General Franco died. Two days later Juan Carlos the First was proclaimed king. At the moment, under the leadership of President Rodriguez "Chapuzero" they are trying to get back to the "Early Modern Period" but may miss it altogether and wind up in the "Dark Ages" again.

"The Modern Period" is considered by many to have begun in France, which makes the French very happy. On the 14th of July 1789 the Bastille was stormed by the urban mob of Paris and this marked the beginning of the French Revolution. In the U.S.A. they are taught that they became "Modern" on the 4th of July 1776 when their Declaration of Independence was adopted. This was fourteen years before France became "Modern" and the French have been very unhappy about it ever since.

According to my doctor I have just entered middle age and am heading towards the abyss of old age at a noticeably increasing rate. 'You are exhibiting all ze telltale signs,' he told me in the mock-German accent he assumes on these occasions.

'Vell, you haf ze physical signs, vich is my department, and then you haf ze mental and ze spiritual signs,' he replied looking at me through his monocled glass eye. 'Allow me to explain furzer,' he continued�.

"Ze physical" signs are all too apparent. "Early Middle Age" began ten years ago when it became necessary to wear glasses for driving and watching T.V. There is the option of a retinal operation or wearing contact lenses but I for one am too squeamish for either. I now wear super-light titanium framed spectacles, which are probably a spin�off from N.A.S.A. Sometimes I put them somewhere and spend a good half-an-hour hunting around for them only to find them on the end of my nose. This is an obvious sign of decreasing sensibility of the proboscis.

This was really bad. My doctor, who was really from Bristol, was sounding like a cartoon German imitating Bogart. I had to get a grip on myself.

'Your hearing is impaired isn't it Mr Dees?' he thundered in my left ear. If it wasn't impaired already it was now. Luckily it had been badly damaged already thanks to an explosion that completely ruined my breakfast some ten or so years ago.

Even so being deaf in one ear has some compensation's. It allows you to turn a deaf ear for one thing. Of course it also means you also hear everything in mono. But then again why buy "surround-sound" if you can only be surrounded on one side? Being partially deaf can save you serious money.

'We can do a scan, of course, or a Doppler test, or even both. We can stick some very expensive equipment in you ear and wiggle it around or some other expensive things, but it won't do any good. If I where you, and thank God I'm not, I'd get a hearing aid,' he answered me in his natural West Country burr, as he span around in his wheel-chair.

'A lot better since I stopped smoking,' I replied, which was true. Smoking and I had parted ways three years previously and apart from putting on 10 Kilos, which sounds so much less than 25 or so pounds whichever ear you listen with, I felt pretty good.

'According to your X-Ray, Mr Dees, your lungs are clearing up pretty well. There's still enough tar and stuff in there to resurface the King's Road, but it's a definite improvement. Three years ago we could have covered London to Brighton and back again,' he said holding the plastic sheet up to the light.

Thus it was that half-an-hour later I found myself in a queue of women in various stages of pregnancy from the slight bump to the ready to pop. They all gave me looks that suggested I was either very butch and slightly pregnant, or just trying to muscle in on an exclusively "girl" thing. My discomfort was augmented by having had to drink four litres of water in order to expand my gut and thereby improve the quality of the scan. I was ready to break my own water at any moment.

'You haven't got an effing clue luv,' she replied. 'Bleedin' men,' she remarked to her neighbour, 'what do they effing know. Bugger all,' she concluded.

I crossed my legs and kept very quiet for the next half-hour. Finally, a male nurse called me in. He covered my stomach in cold sticky gel and rubbed the head of the scanning device through my stomach hair.

I warily asked the Doc's secretary for the bill on the way out. I always pay immediately at the clinic since it is an excellent place to have a coronary thrombosis. When I got home I poured myself a stiff whisky made "healthy" with a splash of imported Ukrainian mineral water labelled "bottled in Chernobyl". Then, sufficiently fortified, I looked up "psychiatrist" in the Yellow Pages and tentatively made an appointment.

Dr Anderson J. Folio had his practice fashionably located several corners away from Harley Street. He had the basement flat and beside his front door was affixed a brass plaque with enough letters after his name to create the anagram of an obscure Welsh railway station.

'How do you feel Mr Dees,' began Folio, who sat balancing a block of pink foolscap on his jiggling left knee. On arrival I noted that one of his socks was yellow and the other red and wondered if this was significant.

I was lying on a worn leather Chesterfield chaise-longue and was looking up at the spider's webs that seemed to have taken possession of the chintzy chandelier that hung precariously above my head.

'To tell you the truth Doctor I've just had a thorough medical check-up and I was told that I'm more or less O.K. for my age, but I was advised to see a psychiatrist; just in case I suppose,' I replied.

'I am not here to answer your questions or give you the questions to your answers. You are the only person who can tell what's going on in your brain. How do you feel about that Uri?' he rejoined.

'I'll tell you how I feel Doctor. I feel that talking to you is a waste of time and money, and that if, just if, you are right and I am the only person who can tell what's going on in my brain I might as well bloody talk to myself,' I said jumping to my feet.

Later, in the "Ferret and Trouser-leg", and nursing a pint of warm and frothy Scorpion beer, brewed on the premises, I recounted my tale to Clancy, an American friend of mine.

'That's why we call them shrinks back home,' he said sipping Budweiser noisily from the bottle, 'it's the effect they have on your bank balance. Tell you what though, if you buy a few more of these,' he gestured with his empty bottle, 'I'll listen to your angst, after all, you know what they say don't you; "a friend in need is a pest."

How do you finally admit to yourself that you're not a "young person" anymore? The best way is to tell a friend your troubles and he or she will tell everybody else that you are past it and they will drop you out of their social lives like a hot potato. When you realise that you have no friends left who are younger than you and the only calls or invites you receive are from people you yourself had dropped five years ago for being a bunch of old farts then it really begins to sinks in.

What are the symptoms? According to Doc' Friar they are of the physical type. Doctor Folio obviously hadn't got a clue and Clancy is going to help me commit social suicide. I've been pretending to myself for a while now that I was still pre-middle age. It helps when women are prepared to believe that you're thirty-six or even less if the ambient lighting is suitably low. But the tell tale signs are brutally visible in the shaving mirror every morning. The stubble has become grey and is as reflective as gin- and-tonic when exposed to ultra-violet light. I now double shave, first electric and then wet, to remove the last grim vestiges. The bathroom shelves are covered in balsams and balms that would honour the boudoir of a "Metro-Sexual". Or is it "Taxi-Sexual" once you reach an uncertain age?

Then there is the hair, or lack of it. I have different shampoos for every day of the week, each designed to clean, strengthen, improve body and add lustre. The trouble is that the only new growth that is apparent is in my ears, my eyebrows and up my nose. Oh yes, middle-age has really begun when you spend time plucking ears, brows and nose, and hoping someone, your younger brother probably, would buy you a defoliating device for your birthday as a joke just because you are too embarrassed to buy one for yourself. In fact you are probably more embarrassed than when you were a teenager buying your first pack of condoms. 'Ah yes, I'd like that some of these and some of those over there in the corner and,' then, shiftily, 'and a nose-plucker in a brown paper bag please".

Even if your body hair weren't migrating to strange zones and changing colour you will still notice the passage of the years when the girl you are talking to doesn't know who David Niven, Janis Joplin, Peter Sellers, Billie Holiday or even the Sex Pistols were. In fact, thanks to the magnificent standard of education now available she probably has no idea of anything that occurred before 1990. So the only solution is to meet people in clubs and discos. The music is so loud that conversation is impossible. In fact you are wearing industrial ear-plugs. All you can hear is the mechanical thud of the 50 million watt speaker system that has been installed to "improve" the quality of your Mediterranean holiday experience. The bass effect is so powerful the hairs on your arms and legs are throbbing painfully. The music has neither words nor theme and the rhythm of a dodgy food mixer. In fact it's just the same "music" as last year's but now you can't stand it. You hang around drinking Champagne and trying to be cool while everybody else is drinking water and gobbling pills. At last it is 7 a.m. and you tumble out onto the street, removing your sunglasses, and then you get gunned down by the killer phrase, "you're nice but my dad's almost as old as you," and you know it's time to bale-out, probably without a parachute.

I stopped droning on to Clancy at this point having just noticed that he'd got up at least two paragraphs ago and was chatting to one of the barmaids who looked young enough to be his daughter let alone mine. A friend indeed�.

My mother is wont to observe that I was born middle aged and have spent the rest of my life having my body try to catch up with my personality. This should please Doctors Friar and Folio. However, it doesn't please my mother who remains a constant number of years older than me and reminds me of it frequently.

She is right of course, but her argument loses force since she has been saying the same thing to me since before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

'Well just be thankful for that. Bits of my body aren't working properly and all you have to complain about is a bit of nasal hair. You can complain when you get to my age. At least I won't be around to listen to it,' she says terminating the conversation triumphantly.

A chef I know recently defined middle-age to me as "not so much feeling closer to The Almighty but the unpleasant sensation that he was closer to you". I am not a religious person in the traditional sense. I believe in "something" but I doubt that counts as religion. "Something" is a rather indefinite concept. It can hardly be described as an organized religious movement. It has no theology. It has no dogma. It has no ritual. There is, to my knowledge, no organization of "Something-ists". Nor are there great works of literature or art or music dedicated to "Something". So where does a "Something-ist" to look for spiritual guidance and solace?

I was educated at an Anglican school, and lapsed almost immediately. The most lapsed Anglican I know lapsed into Catholicism. Most of us simply slump. I suspect that what put me off official religion was being subjected to daily doses of it in Chapel at school for years. The Custard we were served for pudding had the same effect. However, on the plus side, I remember with clarity the Reverend Lenny. He was almost as keen about playing Rugby as he was devoted to God. He told us that he had encountered his faith during the Second World War when, as a prisoner of the Japanese, he was forced to work on the infamous Burma railway. The reality was far worse than that portrayed in the film "The Bridge over the River Kwai" yet there he found his God. He was a truly decent man with profound insight into human nature. He helped me through a couple of adolescent crises and never mixed religion with a word or two of good advice, which I appreciated. I recall him saying useful things such as, "don't let it get to you, you've got your whole life in front of you". If only.

Other people find their path to spiritual enlightenment in New Age cults and alternative beliefs and religions. Madonna, for example, has got into the modernist Kabbala movement, which has been disavowed by almost all official Jewish religious organizations and apparently involves very expensive, non-radioactive, mineral water. Richard Gere is a Buddhist and Tom Cruise is a leading member of the Scientologists. According to the last Census in the United Kingdom there are several thousand Jeddi Knights out there "feeling the Force". Then there are the Druids, and Gaians and Wikans and people who communicate with or are regularly abducted by phantasmagorical aliens. Outside of the "established" religions there are alternative beliefs that range from the weirdly sublime to the incredibly absurd. We all need "something" to believe in.

If the anthropologists are right Homo Sapiens Sapiens, that's us, has been around for about 160.000 years as a distinguishable species. There is evidence that our most distant ancestors evolved down in Southern Africa, on the southern Atlantic coast, and that, by 120.000 years ago, they had a culture that included burial of their dead with some token possessions and flowers as well as a the ritual use of ochre. So even then we may have had some sense of the finite and maybe some questions about the infinite as well. Every culture has had a religion of some sort. We've always worried about the passage of time. Getting old has never been fun.

'Not really. Half of my life is out of focus, I'm half deaf and I'm not allowed to eat and drink anything I enjoy. I've just been ripped off by a quack shrink and what friends I have ignore me. My hair will grow anywhere but in the right place or in the right colour. Most of the pretty girls are less than half my age and I can't keep up with the pace anymore. My mother won't listen to my griping and according to recent statistics I may well live to a ripe old age. Taking everything into consideration, I feel pretty good in fact,' I answer back.

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If you were brought up in Western Europe you probably learnt at quite an early age that the "Midd... In the Middle Ages - a per