Huttonian is off to the far West today-to Kelso no less-to talk to the University of the Third Age, Three Borders coven-about the Middle East. A much more challenging audience than the usual docile student body. 'Third Age' is apparently the politically correct terminolgy for fifty/sixty somethings. But hardly in the Shakespearian sense where
'his acts being seven ages' The third age in this speech from
As you like it 'the lover, sighing like a furnace and with a woeful ballad made to his mistress'eyebrow' . I am sure we still all feel like that now and again but have generally passed through that traumatic and youthful stage. I suspect that we are what the Bard called the Sixth Age:
'the lean and slipper'd pantaloon with spectacles on nose..a world too wide for his shrunk shank and his big manly voice turning towards a childish treble' etc etc-Our Will rather lingers on this passage-shrunk and lean, incidentally, does not apply to most of the elderly shoppers in Morrisons. Thats post Shakespearian diet for you. But at least we are not 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Not quite in
'second childishness and mere oblivion' Not quite yet.
But Universty of the Sixth Age-no, doesn't quite sound right.
