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The world’s oldest man died today at the age of just 112. That’s a frighteningly young age for the world’s oldest man to die. The world’s oldest men are certainly getting younger. Or is it just that we are getting older? You know you’re getting old when the world’s oldest man is looking younger - that’s what they say.
It’s certainly been a world’s oldest person holocaust this year, with them dying in increasing numbers in all kinds of categories. We also lost Ireland’s oldest ever woman today. She was a staggering 57.
I am still looking good in my campaign to be the last person from the 20th Century still alive. I’ve made it tough for myself by jumping the gun a bit and being born in 1967, but I am still confident I can do it. Though death is creeping up on me. There’s not a single man in he world born in the first three years of the 1900s and logic dictates that I too shall pass in the next 65 years. But if I can get to 160 I reckon I am in with a shot and with modern medicine who says that that won’t happen? As long as modern medicine is only available to me.
Chris Evans, not that one, is coming round next Monday to bag up and send off all the kickstarter prizes (I am hoping he will have to use Shepherd’s Bush Green Post Office to do it) and so I spent much of my day off drawing round my own hand with a sharpie. I have so far only done about 350 of the 600 required and I am away until Sunday (which is my birthday) so there might be a lot of last minute hand-tracing to do and another few T-shirts too. I had not really anticipated how difficult this would be, but luckily I still find it amusing that I created this task for myself. It is all that I deserve. My father-in-law suggested I could just photocopy the hands. But I know that no one would be satisfied with that. If my fingers aren’t coated in Sharpie ink then I have not done my job. My job is to draw round my own hand. I am nearly 48 years old. Hopefully one of these will show up on the Antiques Roadshow 2145 and totally baffle the expert. I think most of them will just go (if not directly) into the recycling. But as I am doing lots of different colour combos both in the pen I use to draw round my hand and the pen I use to sign and number the art (and it is art) I hope some obsessive buffoon will make it his (and it will be a he) life’s mission to get one hand of every possible combination. Good luck with that.
Sadly I think that man will be me. Doing an J R Hartley and trying to get back the hands that meant so much to me and only me. Just like those cavemen I am using the image of my hand to say, "I was once here". Unlike them I have employed the medium of cardboard rather than a cave. So those hairy fuckers will outlive me.
