CAMBODIAN COMINGS CAMBO'DEA: As Cambodia gets greener I get greyer

When i get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When i'm sixty-four.

"When I'm Sixty-Four" was released in 1967 on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was still a mere boy of 18. Did I or indeed the Beatles ever imagine being 64. OR did I expect to be in the Kingdom of Kymer far away from family and friends and unable to receive the few birthday cards that annually arrive.Well pour moi the fateful day has arrived. Shucks............................

Seeing that I am spending my birthday so far away from familiar faces I thought I would invite a few familiar faces

...after all they are my most favourite group and I always fancied that I was the first in my class to discover/recognise them as a refreshing change to the American heroes of the guys who were slighty older. Love Me Do late one night on Luxemburg 208...memories.

Dream stuff, so let me use some pictures of someone closer to me but that I didn't always always understand.

Just as our favourite icons have got older and greyer so I have slavishly followed

While there is still a boy inside one cannot deny the evidence of the camera and maybe doing this will be carthartic. So here goes.....so indulge me and feel free to comment, no matter how unkind !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

started blond and curly (wee)

became serious and thoughtful at an early age (briefly)

still thoughtful but with a little more attitude (fancy name for wearing nerdy glasses)

rapping in Nigeria and wondering which of us will get the extra bottle of coke

STRATGIES TO AVOID APPEARING OLDER

paint your face and scare a kid

divert the point of the onlooker gaze away from the grey top

put on the shades

a wig is one way to ignore greying behaviour

turn your back to the world and hang out with ET

wear a bright scarf when shades don't do it on there own

make it look like the grey is fake

So much for strategies sure isn't life GREYT

So maybe sometimes its better to recognise your greying and play the roles that life has given one. Anyway one doesn't want to look as young as your son on his rite of passage

maybe greying is a sign of maturing haha and passing on the baton

SO rejoycing being greying

grey enough to retire and descend into the void (or is it the stairway to ???)

drown your aging sorrows

kept the best wine until the last. See how well red and grey go together

and finally back to where I have spent most of my life, in the school classroom...a lot forgotten but still a lot to learn and maybe the real learning is ahead...deadly thought