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I was fifty myself this year.   When Amis wrote, I must have been one of the "shags with fifty or so actual years to go".  We've been lucky.  Thanks to the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan some of the horrors Amis anticipated have been held at bay.  We must do the same for our children.  Jim Thornton, 2004

Ode to me by Kingsley Amis

Fifty to-day, old lad?

Well that’s not doing so bad:

All those years without

Being really buggered about.

The next fifty won’t be so good.

True, but for now – touch wood –

You can eat and booze and the rest of it.

While the shags with fifty or so

Actual years to go

Will find most of them tougher,

The going a good bit rougher

Within the Soviet sphere –

Which means when the bastards are here,

Making it perfectly clear

That all the double-think

(Both systems on the blink

East and West the same, and

War just the name of a game)

Is the ballocks it always was.

But will it be clear? Because

After a whole generation

Of phasing out education

Throwing the past away

Letting the language decay

And expanding the general mind

Till it bursts, we might well find

That it wouldn’t make such odds

To the poor semi-sentient sods

Shuffling round England then

That they’ve lost what made them men.

So bloody good luck to you mate,

That you weren’t born to late

For at least a chance of happiness,

Before unchangeable crappiness

Spreads all over the land.

Be glad you’re fifty – and

That you got there while things were nice,

In a world worth looking at twice.

So here’s wishing you many more years, but not that many, Cheers!

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Last modified: September 10, 2006