GETTING ON

This is the title of a play by Alan Bennett which I saw many years ago.  I remember it for a bit of dialogue which struck me as funny then, and now I am a granddaddy, it still resonates. First parent: “I’m just going to go upstairs and put the children down.” Second parent: “Humanely, I hope!”  But the play’s title is really quite ambiguous: it’s about a successful politician, who is “getting on” in years as well as in his career. 

And I guess I now know more about both themes of the play than I did when I saw it as a callow youth.  Then I used to be a bit put out when people addressed me jovially as “young man”, as in “Now then, young man, how are getting on?” I used to think “I’m NOT a young man, I’m very old, I’m thirty” (by that time I did have two children to put down in one sense or another). Now I have to have a hip replaced, and the doctors and surgeons who have discussed this with me have made me really pleased because I have to have a “young hip” operation.  I’m really still quite a young man, even though it’s thirty years later: I’ve been “getting on”, you see.

Last night I met up with some old friends, and one of them greeted me, leaning on my stick, wanting to know how I was. Alas, I am not stoical or brave enough to conceal the pain I feel (my wife did, but then she, like Bennett, was from Yorkshire), so it was pretty evident to my friend that I had some kind of trouble.  But I knew he had a problem too: he had shared it with us all a few months ago.  I was far more anxious to find out about him, and actually felt rather foolish, showing the pain I felt, when his problems were far worse than mine, and incurable. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease – in his late fifties.

Of all medical conditions to have, an arthritic hip and a cataract are the easiest to deal with, and the most likely to be successful.  So much so that my doctor refers to it as mere carpentry! By contrast, Parkinson’s is, at present, only susceptible to limited control.  The body eventually degenerates, despite all the pills and medication and so on. The patient has to endure shaking and inability to manipulate things, as well as all the side effects of the medication they give.  It’s a very slow death, and pretty humiliating. Meanwhile the mind, as far as I know, remains intact, but eventually locked inside a body, unable to communicate.
 
So I was anxious to find out how my friend was coping. He is another of my Morris dancing friends, a great big jovial chap, with an infectious laugh and a good line in Music Hall songs.  How was he coping with this living death?  Well, he said he was getting on OK, he had to keep taking the pills (we compared notes as to how many each of us needed, and how much we rattled), and he said he had to keep active. So there he was, joining in the dancing, and playing his triangle in the band, and generally managing to get on as normal – for the time being.  Only when he had to take some money out of his wallet did he really struggle: already he was finding it hard to manipulate things.

I found his fortitude profoundly moving, and, as I said, I felt ashamed of bearing my own pain so badly. But then Paul is a big hearted fellow, and one who always got on very well with his fellow men (yet another sense of “getting on”).

And then as well as getting on in years, and getting on with your life, there’s getting on to the career ladder – and eventually, when you’re really getting on (in most senses) it’s time to be thinking about getting off again.  I’m beginning to face up to the concept of ceasing full time work. I realise I am quite unusual in having worked at the same career for nearly 40 years, and been in employment all that time: most of us have some sort of career break or other, voluntary or otherwise.  What will it be like, not seeing the friends I’ve worked with for so many years?  What will it be like, getting on in a new mode of life?

But do I hear an impatient voice among my readers, tired of all this soul searching? “Get on with it!” you say. Or possibly all this punning is too much: “Get on with you, get away!” It’s amazing how much meaning two simple words can carry in our versatile language.  And I haven’t begun to explore the social uses of the word - and as this is a respectable family paper, I think I had better draw back from exploring some of the concepts of getting on with someone, or indeed getting off, either.

Time to be getting on, then, I think…

William Marsterson - February 2008