Growing Old Disgracefully 21

"Are we going to visit Roy?" asked Mikey.
"it's not Roy," said Mark.  "It's Mr. Bundy.  Would you call your teacher at school by his first name?"
"No Dad."
"Don't call old people by their first name.  Treat them with respect.  I'm nearly 60 and I call him Mr. Bundy."  They knocked on the bedroom door.
"Enter," came a croaky voice.
"Hello Mr. Bundy."
"Hello Mark.  What sort of day have you had?"
"Oh, all right.  What kind of day have you had?"
"I'll tell you what kind of day I've had.  I've had a right rotten miserable day."
"Oh dear, Mr. Bundy, why's that?"
"My computer, my computer, please God, give me a new computer.  It took me an hour to get through to my emails."
"At least you did it eventually," said Mark.  "I don't always get something to work on my computer when I've been trying it for an hour."
"What else can we talk about?" asked Mikey.
"There isn't anything else to talk about.  Only email friends and friends on Skype," said Mr. Bundy.
"Don't you ever go out?" asked Mikey.  "You've got a new mobility scooter.  Don't you go anywhere on it?"
"I'm too tired."
"He is," said Mark.  "Mr. Bundy insists on me taking him everywhere in the car.  The doctor's twice a week, hospital once a week, church on Sunday."
"Mikey, can you have a look at my computer?  Can you tell me what's wrong with it?"  Mikey sat on the chair behind the broken computer desk. He turned on the old lap top computer that had been placed on top of it.
"Dad, this really is bad.  I can see why he's so upset about it.  20 helpfiles popping up on the screen.  You have to turn them off one by one.  Try Google Chrome instead of Mozilla, Mr. Bundy, you might find on an old machine like this it uses less power."
"It's no use trying to explain anything to him," said Mark.  "He never remembers anything you tell him."

Pastor David spoke into the phone.  "Hello.  Could I speak to Gordon Bennett?"
"Speaking."
"Hello Gordon.  There really aren't enough people who want to come to this event and they're nearly all pensioners.  I can't pay you a fee that would be appropriate for a writer of your esteem."
"A writer of my esteem?  Pastor David, I'm not a writer of any esteem.  I haven't sold as many as one million books in a whole lifetime."
"What you write is excellent.  You're well known across the whole country.  I've learnt more from your books than I learnt from Bible college."
"But I only sell 10,000 copies.  They're small print runs, Pastor, a successful writer sells a few million books, not a few thousand."
"We're selling tickets at £7.50.  I've sold thirty.  The maximum amount of money I will raise is £200."
"That's fine, Pastor, just give me enough money for the train fare and a bed and breakfast overnight.  Treat the rest as a donation to the church."
"That's very generous of you."
"No it isn't." 

Mark and Mikey came into Stanley's bedroom.  Stanley had his old radio on.
"Look Mark, I'm in touch with the modern world.  I've got the AM radio on."
"What's an AM radio?" asked Mikey.
"Long wave and medium wave," said Stanley.
"The signals were transmitted from a ship on the sea.  How windy does it have to be before you have long waves?"
"Radio Caroline was on a ship on the sea.  Most other stations were on land."
"What does it do, this A. N. radio?"
"It plays music, news and sport," said Stanley.
"Wouldn't it be easier to listen to it on the internet?  My tablet's smaller than that thing."
"In 1974, when this radio was made, there was no internet."
"No internet?  What did people do all day?"
"They read books and watched television," said Mark.
"How did people keep in touch?  It must have cost a fortune in phone calls.  Did they have contract phones?"
"Mikey, in 1974 a telephone was something that hung on a wall," said Mark.  "If you phoned somebody, they had to be in or they missed the call."
"Rubbish.  That's impossible.  The world would come to an end.  What if a car broke down on a motorway?"
"You got out and you walked to a phone a mile away by the side of the motorway," said Mark.
"Do you remember when Radio 1 went on 275 and 285 metres?" asked Stanley.
"Yes I do."
"Do you remember when commercial radio went on air 24 hours a day?"
"Yes."
"Exciting times.  You could listen to pop music in the middle of the night."
"Do you mean there was a time when you couldn't listen to pop music in the middle of the night?"
"Mikey, when I was courting your mother I was sitting in the bedroom listening to 'You, The Night and Music,' on Radio 2.  Radio 1 went off at six o' clock."
"You could listen to your record player in the middle of the night," said Stanley.  "But mine was too big to go in the bedroom."
"Too big to go in the bedroom?  What's a record player?"
"Plastic discs," said Mark.  "Music is recorded on them."
"And the thing that plays them is too big to go in the bedroom?"
"I had a cassette recorder in the bedroom," said Stanley.  "But I had hardly any tapes.  Cassette tapes were big things, like this."  Stanley took a cassette tape out of a drawer.
"How much music is on that then?"
"About 40 minutes."  Mikey looked disgusted.
"Couldn't you just buy a memory stick?"
"If you had a memory stick in the seventies," said Mark, "you'd have nothing to plug it into.  No home computers, no Ipods, no MP3 players."
"What's an MP3 player?"
"We're growing old, Mark, we're growing old," said Stanley.

Gordon Bennett arrived at the church on Thursday evening.
"Doesn't he look old," said Stanley.  "I thought he was about 30."
"He probably was the last time you saw him.  Stanley, if Gordon Bennett is old, we're old."  Gordon Bennett spoke into the microphone.
"I became a Christian because of my terrible name.  All my life people have made fun of me.  The air conditioning would go off at work.  'Gordon Bennett, it's hot in here.'  There'd be a traffic jam on the motorway.  'Gordon Bennett, we'll be stuck here for hours.'  The computer at work would go off.  'We won't be able to do anything today.  The company will lose £200 an hour.  Gordon Bennett.'  Will you please stop using my name as a swear word?  I asked my father why he had called me Gordon Bennet.  Life would have been so much easier if I had been called Gary or Mark Bennett.  He played me a record by Johnny Cash called 'A Boy Named Sue' about a man who named his son Sue so that he would grow up to be a tough, fighting man.  I asked, 'Dad, why didn't you call me Sue?  I'd rather be accused of being a secret transsexual than have a name which is a swear word.'  I began to read a Gideon Bible I had been given.  It had a section on Where to Find Help, When Friends Fail, When Discouraged or Afraid.  I was fascinated by these questions.  I was drawn deeper and deeper into the Bible.  That's how I became a Christian, and eventually a Christian author and conference speaker, which is why I am speaking to you here today.  I write books.  I write simple concordances, a series of Bible verses on a theme.  I know, you can do it on a computer.  How do you think I do it?  The thing is, it takes several years to do a search like that on a computer.  If you look up a word like 'Spirit of God' on the computer, you don't know how many of those verses call the Spirit of God something else, they might say 'Holy Spirit' instead, or some of them might contain the words Spirit of God but have nothing at all to do with what you're trying to say.  So you use as many different keywords as possible and you edit out the verses you don't need, hundreds of verses.  Then you add some comments to try and make the verses easy to understand.  You want a book that is comprehensible to someone with a reading age of 14. Strong's Concordance is all right for people who are over 50, well educated, and love the Authorised Version.  I wanted my work to be accessible to the masses.  And so the Topical Bible Commentary was born."  A woman came running to where Mark and Stanley were sitting.
"There's an old man trapped on the stairs.  He can't get down."  Mark ran to the stairs.  He could see the old man standing on a landing half way up, anxiously poking the stairs with his walking stick.
"Hello Mr. Bundy."
"I was looking for a toilet, but there wasn't a toilet upstairs.  Now I can't get down."
"Have no fear, Mr. Bundy.  I used to work in a hospital.  I am trained.  I will walk you down the stairs.  The toilet is on the ground floor."  

Mark and Mr. Bundy returned from the toilet to the church hall.  Gordon Bennett was still speaking.
"When I first started writing I thought I was great, I thought I knew everything.  Then God spoke to me and warned me not to think of myself more highly than I ought.  I began to realise that my pride was a blockage in the pipe.  I humbled myself before God.  I fasted and prayed for a whole day. I asked God to make me the most humble person in the world ever.  When the blockage of pride in my heart had been removed, the spirit could flow freely.  I wrote the greatest book on the Holy Spirit that had been written for a whole generation.  This book is on the table at the back.  It's £8."
Gordon Bennett now stood by the table on which his books were laid out.  Sarah came and took some money out of her purse.
"I'm afraid I only have £4," she said.  "Could I have the book for a little bit less because I'm a pensioner?"
"A pensioner?  A pensioner?  Let me tell you something about pensions," said Gordon Bennett.  "I will receive my pension next year.  The government have decided to increase the retirement age to 67.  I have to rent a 2 bedroom flat.  I've got to have somewhere to put the computer and the printer.  I live on £50 a week."
"The Lord will provide," said Mr. Bundy.
"He does. It's a good feeling when you see the last loaf of bread in the supermarket for 36p or a tin of mushy peas for 15p.  It's a good feeling."
"Perhaps if the two of us clubbed together we could buy one of your books.  Me and Mr. Bundy," said Mark.
"I have already paid £7.50 for my ticket," said Mr. Bundy.
"The Bible says blessed are the poor," said Sarah.
"Yes it does," said Gordon Bennett, "I wrote a book about it.  Praise be to the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our sorrows so that, with the comfort we receive, we can comfort others."  Mark turned to Pastor David.
"Pastor, you were going to give Gordon his expenses and take the rest of the money as a donation to the church.  Why don't we give all the money to Gordon.  Maybe he can buy a new fridge?"
"I don't think we have raised enough money for him to be able to buy a new fridge."
"I have a fridge.  I am very grateful for it."
"Remember the people in Africa who don't have a fridge," said Mr. Bundy.
"He could buy a joint of meat," said Mark.
"I don't think we've raised enough money for him to buy a joint of meat," said the Pastor.
"How about a tin of stewing steak?"
"Tell you what," said Pastor David, "I'll buy a book.  Here's £8."
"I get paid 80p for every book that I sell," said Gordon Bennett.
"Buy a tin of meatballs," said Mark.
"Gordon Bennett," said Gordon Bennett, picking up a book from the table in each hand.  "Does anyone else want to buy a book?  Could I graduate from a tin of meatballs to a tin of stewing steak or a tin of chopped ham and pork?"