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Today is my 70th birthday. I’m extremely grateful to be gainfully employed and I no longer smelling of urine. Apparently. No embarrassing reek…not even a vague waft of wee surrounds me these days.

A decade ago and frustratingly unemployed I began a piss take piece in Canberra’s City News with ….”I’m going to buy myself a 60th birthday gift . A pet monkey which I can train to rip the face off the next moron who tries to buoy me with the stupid saying: “Sixty is the new fifty.” 

I didn’t buy that bullshit nor did I buy that monkey.  Homer Simpson was full of shit. Apparently it’s illegal.

Dodgy mathematics aside there was another insidious concept seeping into fashion.

Initially I thought it was my outrageous responses to “Outstanding Achievements”…inventing the marketing phenomenon of “happy Hour”, convincing Bruce Springsteen to lift “I’m On Fire” from his “Born In The USA” album and release it as a radio single.     

They smelled the urine.  Too old.        

Despite forensically sandblasting my resume of any evidence of  “advanced” age, I could not score a job interview after firing off scores of applications for scores of jobs. How did those clever HR people detect that I was too old to be of any practical use to society? 

It’s not rocket science. HR is a calling which majors in pinpointing those who are “on the nose”.

They immediately sniffed an old person application and swiftly fired off the stock standard syrupy letdown…….”thank you for your recent application for the above position. Unfortunately your application was not successful on this occasion. Your time and interest in the role is appreciated and we would like to assure you that full consideration was given to all applications received”.

 A long running plea from a long standing PM that “ mature” workers consider postponing retirement until their 70s sounded promising. Turned out that our “lifetime of unique skills and expertise” which were still “desperately needed” was no more than political pocket pissing.

Now with 3 score years and 10 on the clock, I’m more “mature” in both senses of the word, and way less cynical. Employed, and not a trace of bitterness nor redolent of the above mentioned yellow river which continues to savagely cut its ageist way through the wide brown land.

As the Simpson’s bully Nelson Mandela Muntz says….”Smell Ya later.”