As a younger person living in London I remember that Bournemouth always seemed to be the butt of many ageist jokes. It was always seen as a bit of a retirement centre, mostly frequented by people well \u2018beyond the pale\u2019 of youth. Newspaper articles that mentioned the town often carried photographs of elderly people sitting on benches on the seafront, and postcards of busloads of genteel tourists didn\u2019t do much to change the look. I don\u2019t know if that is still the perception but it all came back to me recently when I visited the Bournemouth International Centre to see Elvis Costello in concert. Having a drink at the bar before the start of the show I couldn\u2019t help thinking how old most of the audience looked. It may have taken me a while to remember that I hadn\u2019t been to see Elvis Costello for about 25 years, but it didn\u2019t take much longer to realise that I was as old, if not older, than most of those around me. Hearing an announcement asking people to ensure they switched off their mobile phones I had a moment of worry that I might fall asleep during the performance\u2014as might happen occasionally at the cinema. I needn\u2019t have worried. Elvis Costello, at the sprightly age of 57, stormed through a nearly three hour set of just a fraction of his wealth of material and did it with as much, if not more energy than many of today\u2019s \u2018stars\u2019. Where some of those that wowed their audiences in the 70s and 80s often appear today as a weak parody of themselves, Costello managed to remain relevant and energetic. He was even gracious enough to share the stage with members of the audience whom, after helping to choose the songs to be played, were offered the opportunity to get into a go-go dancing cage and dance under the bright lights on the stage. That was the point when it all looked a bit Bournemouth again. For some of us there is a point in life where we accept that we are just not go-go dancers, but for others\u2026 well you only live once. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a younger person living in London I remember that Bournemouth always seemed to be the butt of many ageist jokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorials","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}