“I’m feeling old tonight”

St. Andrews, Scotland

Sunday, October 7, 2018

 

I’m feeling old, tonight.

It might be that after leaving Santa Rosa yesterday at noon, laying over in Dublin for a couple hours, flying on to Edinburgh, and driving here to St. Andrews, I haven’t slept in 34 hours.

It might be that several times today, kind young men and women in the airport or aboard my Aer Lingus flight referred to me as “sir”, not your usual obligatory courteous  “because-you’re-the-customer-“sir””, but the solicitous “you -look-like-you-could-use-a hand, -old-timer– “sir”.”

It probably is the memory of one guy  honking at me as I might have . . . just might have . . .  cut him off while abruptly exiting a roundabout outside of Glenvothes.

Or it might be the young man who, just a few minutes ago,  just came to my hotel room door inquiring, “are you alright sir?” after I pulled this red cord suspended from the ceiling in the bathroom.  I thought it was a light switch.    Easy mistake, right?

 

Or it might be the fact that I am staying in the historic MacDonald Rusacks Hotel which borders the 18th fairway of the Old Course at St. Andrews.

Mind you, there is a “New Course” at St. Andrews that is next to the “Old Course”; they call it the “New Course” because it was built in 1895. It was designed by Old Tom Morris who is not to be confused with his son Young Tom Morris. Old Tom lived to be 87; Young Tom? He died when he was 24.

 

Or it might be that I am staying in the The George Whyte Melville Room here at the MacDonald Rusacks.

I wasn’t familiar with George so I Googled him. George was apparently all the rage in his day for writing horse and hound adventures. (I just don’t understand why your steeple chase novels don’t sell like they used to)

 

It was ol’ George who first penned the phrase, in his 1876 poem entitled The Object of Life,   that we should “eat, drink and be merry; because tomorrow we die.”

Thanks George. I feel much better.