Turning sixty and taking stock

Saturday, 25 July 2026

Dr Richard Swainson runs Hamilton's last DVD rental store and is a weekly contributor to the Waikato Times history page.

OPINION: What's it all about? A refrain sung by Cilla Black six decades back, by way of Burt Bacharach, the theme tune to Alfie, one of the big movies of my birth year. Michael Caine, as the ever so slightly tortured, titular Cockney playboy, aging by film's end, pondered the meaning of life, often directly to camera.

On the day of my sixtieth birthday it seems an obvious theme. What is the point? We don't lack in metrics of assessment. The most obvious is the biological: procreation. Capitalism provides one gauge - the acquisition of material possessions, especially house and car - and labour, still another: the building and sustaining of a reputable career, in the trades, in private business or the professions. In the arena of interpersonal relationships, most would foreground connection with a significant other, be it the semi-permanence of marriage or the de facto equivalent, fleeting pleasures of the flesh, or something in between.

Having failed on all counts, what's left? Perhaps hard work, per se? At sixty I can honestly say that I toil harder - or at least longer - than at any other time. A seven-day-a-week shop, obituary writing, historical musings, opinion pieces, two pub quizzes and the odd theatre review comprise the output. If this didn't collectively end a marriage it certainly didn't help. The dull sensation of a task completed can equate to satisfaction but isn't exactly an end in itself. Much better than begging on the streets - the lot of too many fellow Hamiltonians - yet not quite enough of a reason to carry on, especially when, like Mr Micawber, outgoings exceed earnings.

Maybe art provides meaning? The best of it - cinema, literature, music, or cricket - mines the human condition in ways that encourages empathy and understanding. I am a little suspect though of the subjective way we each process art. My appreciation of, say, a Louis Armstrong trumpet solo, or a John Clarke monologue, or a Martin Crowe cover drive, is profoundly different from yours. In some ways art divides as much as it brings us together. I can argue the case for Tolstoy in addressing the meaning of life - Pierre in War and Peace and Levin in Anna Karenina wrestle with the theme in ways that continue to engage and stimulate - but I suspect many will not have the taste for lengthy Russian novels, especially in the age of Putin.

A recent early morning at the pub has led to reflection. Every four years I flirt with becoming an Englishman. England was the land of my mother's birth and it comes in handy at times when the round ball game threatens to overshadow that of the oval, especially for ex-pats. England's only triumph in the FIFA World Cup came in the year I arrived on the scene. That in itself makes it a birthright. When I realised that in 2026 the final of this year's tournament would fall on the very date of my 60th birthday, a second win seemed almost predestined.

First, England had to make the final. A game against Argentina, with resonances of both Falklands war and Maradona's celestial palm, promised much.

If I have refrained from any references to religion thus far it is not just the indifference of the non-believer. My agnosticism extends to this heresy: I feel that the public house is my church, that reading a pub quiz constitutes minor clerical credentials and that Jesus was onto something when he introduced the notion of booze as a means of connection and sense of immortality.

The gathering of English supporters on the Thursday of the semi-final did not quite have the weight of numbers of the previous Sabbath but there was no less intensity evident. I was welcomed, generously, by a group of relative strangers, my partiality in support of their team instilling a genuine sense of comradeship. Whatever differences in age, nationality or circumstance, theirs was a cause in which we were entirely united.

History has already recorded the result. English pluck in scoring the opening goal was followed by timidity and retrenchment, the defeat that followed of their own doing.

When the Messi cross led to Martínez's match winner an astonishing pall of silence fell over the entire room. No one swore, no one groaned, no one screamed out in anguish. Even the Argentine supporters, if there were any, respected the majesty of the moment. After six decades of disappointment England had lost yet again and the only answer was mute acceptance.

The silence continued for something like ten seconds. By the time anyone said anything I had come to realise that it was unique, that I had never before been part of such collective, synchronised melancholy. The communal response was something innate and by definition unspoken. An en masse sadness.

You might think that it would be shared, positive experiences that would unite us. A music concert, for example. I could list those key international acts whose performances serve as life highlights - Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Violent Femmes, Split Enz - as well as countless nights entertained by musician friends locally. However, to restate a point, I think we all process art individually. Even singing along, we are thinking something different, divided internally.

When the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup in 2011 I was sitting very close to the same spot where I was 15 years later, in a large crowd on Victoria St, Hamilton at the local, The Londoner. As people were on their feet, expressing themselves with yelps and fist pumps, as Queen's We Are the Champions rang out, I was miserable inside, thoughts dominated by the absence of a father who had died just a few weeks before. If only dad had lived long enough.

Life cannot be ascribed one definitive meaning. Connection to other human beings is certainly a central aspect. Happiness is an experience that cannot truly be felt alone. And sorrow, ironically, the great unifier.