A Paean to Inertia

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For the first two months of this year whilst I was not posting I had the kind of ‘viewing’ figures I had only previously attained at the height of a particularly virulent sugar dream, although conversely I had very few ‘likes’ and even fewer comments because, I assume, our little robot friends don’t find this kind of rambling nonsense their cup of Darjeeling, despite the fact that they appear to have read each of my previous 1,088 posts at least three times a day for weeks on end. Since I have started to post again the stats have fallen dramatically. By my calculations, if I was to start to publish six posts a week my readership would assume the depth, if not the inverse volume, of a black hole – a vortex into which you would all risk being drawn by association. I cannot risk that. You have, after all, done no harm to me. I do, however, currently find myself writing far more than it is possible for me to accommodate here in a single post per week, and despite the presence in my life of many other, ultimately pointless, authorial projects, I began to think that I might well start to publish twice a week again, if only for a while: until my capacity to assemble seven hundred words of waffle on the theme of who-knows-what deserts me and the world, having made it all the way to hell in a handcart, kicks back and puts a bat up the nightie of all of those in charge. But then came the realisation of how fraught with unseen consequences such an enterprise might prove to be.

I would have to change ‘my days’ for a start. Wednesday feels like a great day to post because I associate it with the middle of the week for most Monday to Friday workers – a day for which, trapped as it is between two weekends, a little diversion (particularly one that does not involve remorse, regret or losing your wallet in mysterious circumstances) is generally welcomed and I don’t think that I want to move away from that at the moment. If I was going to seriously contemplate posting twice a week, I feel as though I would need to schedule something for the weekend so a regular Tuesday and Friday regime would probably be the way it would have to be. I like a bit of routine.

During the last couple of weeks I have rediscovered an old way of working and, coincidentally unearthed a completely new one. In my pre-retirement days I would carry paper with me at all times and I would jot down notes throughout the day. A single day’s outpourings could often result in a complete post, often – due to my scattergun approach to storytelling – needing minimal editing, although not all of them made it through ‘to air’ because, as limited as my capacity for self-analysis is, I do recognise puerile when I see it. It is alarming how often the content of my brain resembles something written by Enid Blyton on an acid trip. I do keep the unused posts ‘on file’ for a little while in case other ideas get a little sparse, but it doesn’t take long at all before I realise that saying nothing is very much preferable to running the risk of sounding like Donald Trump’s hairdresser after they have inhaled rather too much setting lotion. I have started to carry paper again…

My new discovery however is that, given a simple fact or anecdote to relate, I can now simply sit down at the laptop and do it immediately without recourse to paper, pens, caffeine, wine or chocolate. (Ok, I admit to exaggerating about the last three. I have attempted to treat my body as a temple, but the bugger has started to fall apart on me so, quite frankly, it is going to have to learn to stand up for itself.) It gives my posts a certain immediacy (bad grammar, bad spelling and total lack of narrative thrust) they did not previously have. So, a return to posting two or three times a week is certainly doable: It takes no more than five minutes of watching the news on TV to realise that very little in this world is at all rational and, as much as I often feel that I must be from another planet, I understand that I am actually part of this reality and therefore in writing about it, I don’t have to make sense either. It is a relief if I am honest.

Away from blogging, most of what I write has some semblance of plot: a pre-defined direction of travel with a beginning, a middle and (usually) a thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion. I generally have to buckle on my ‘big boy pants’ before settling down at the keyboard to re-gather the threads of something previously started: I need to remember where I am, where I am going and why. Even the absurd requires a certain kind of logic. I can do it when I try but I do realise that despite all contrary temptations, I recognize the pressing need to finish what I have started elsewhere before I increase my output here. Maybe the extra down-time will enable me to weed out some of my more sickly contributions before they plop into cyberspace – although in retrospect it is probably unlikely. A return to the twice-weekly reportage of mediocre mundanity could well still be the way that this eventually develops, but – despite an ego shouting in my ear that what this wholly illogical world actually needs is more of me – I think that for now I will continue to limit myself to a singular literary whinge per week. I don’t imagine the bots will like it very much, but frankly if it saves us all from being drawn into an interstellar abyss, it’s probably a price I am prepared to pay…

Ironically, this post has taken the longest time to write having found itself in and out of the bin on numerous occasions whilst I grappled with the problems attendant with a piece that has substantially changed track along the way, meaning that the ending (which I liked) had nothing to do with the beginning which has now found itself in the middle of a piece about something else entirely. It has become a little bit of a paean to inertia which, now I come to think about it, is very apt…

Vagaries

I’m not fishing for sympathy here (although it is, of course, always welcomed) but I have not been well.

Now, being unwell, you will rightly suggest, is nothing unusual – certainly nothing to write home about for someone of my age – but I am now staggering into month three and, lassitude in hand, facing certain facts for the first time in my life: a) although this is almost certainly not something that will kill me, it is nonetheless, something that I will most probably die with; b) I feel certain that it is not something to which I would so readily have succumbed in my previous six decades on this earth and c) that it has been able to knock me so low is almost certainly due to my advancing years. I don’t like it.

In common with most people I imagine, whilst I have always known that old age would be coupled with increasing ill-health, I was pretty certain that I was well-equipped to sidestep it. I am not, after all, most people. I am perfectly aware that my eventual fate is the same as everybody else’s, but if I am asked I cannot picture it at all. Infirmity is for other people. Death will call on me, but I do not plan on being around to meet it.

I have retained a child-like brain that refuses to envisage a future without me in it. Unfortunately that self-same brain is in charge of my less ageless body and when my grandkids say, “Can you do a roly-poly grandad?” it answers “Of course,” before I have the opportunity to talk some sense into it and, let’s face it, once you’ve told the grandkids you can do a roly-poly, you’re bloody well going to have to do it even if it means taking your vertebrae home in a sack. You can surround yourself with kids, or you can surround yourself with people of your own age, and we all know what they are like.

It is hard to pinpoint the age at which we start to regress, but it is there for all of us: the second childhood; the age of ‘To hell with it. Why not?’ The age of resenting being told you can’t do something to such an extent that you will resolve to do it, no matter the price you will pay. Consequence disappears from view like a five-year old with a skateboard on Ben Nevis. The ability to foresee the consequences of your actions is something you do not achieve until puberty, at which point it is trumped by the ability to ignore them. Everything bad will happen to somebody else.

Once we have children, our lives become ruled by cause and effect and the fear of death becomes far more potent, not because a foreshortened existence is any more terrifying than it ever was, but because the thought of leaving the kids to fend for themselves is something we are all programmed to resist. Risk is something taken by those without children. Until, for the rest of us the grandkids come along. They are your joy, but they are the responsibility of your children and if their abiding memory is of you dying whilst doing something monumentally bonkers for a person of your age… there is a certain appeal in going out to a chorus of “Doesn’t he realise how old he is?”

For the last few weeks I have been robbed of all potential of behaving in a thoroughly age-inappropriate manner and the sooner it sorts itself out the better. It is very easy to tire of being a pin-cushion. I have things to do that would be considered extremely foolhardy in anybody else of my age. I have a life to live that does not embrace illness and is more likely to involve a stolen half-hour in a soft-play than Sudoku on a river cruise.

I may have aged a few years in the last few weeks, but I have decided to leave consequence behind me.

Now, find my stick and oil my truss, I’m going for that roly-poly…

Mission Statement 2.0

Seven and a half years having elapsed since my original ‘Mission Statement’ I thought that it was perhaps time for me to once again take a moment or two in which to ruminate on the disparate reasons for all of this. I, in common with the rest of the world, have changed over that time: in 2018 the UK Prime Minister was Theresa May, The U.S. President was Donald J Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping… so, ok, the world has not actually changed that much at all: maybe it just feels more f*cked up than it used to be…

I have changed. I was approaching my sixtieth birthday back at the start of this and I am comfortably past my sixty-seventh now. Physically I have changed – hence the new site icon with which I appear to have replaced a smug Kenny Rogers lookalike with a startled Freddie Mercury – I seldom drink and write these days and if I have a peanut butter sandwich I owe it to my teeth to make certain that it isn’t crunchy, but this blog continues to be principally about me and how I fit into the world that surrounds me.

Well, not terribly well as it turns out. We rub along ok I guess, the world and I, but as I get older, the world is definitely gaining the upper hand. Since the start of this picaresque narrative we have, in the UK, blundered through Brexit, staggered through Boris Johnson, done God-knows-what through Liz Truss and we are now about to bequeath Nigel Farage to the world (although, let’s be honest, some of you deserve him). The rest of you have had to endure the age of the three Presidential Marx Brothers: all of them barmy and each with a finger on the nuclear trigger. Between them they have made the sad descent of each of us into mental and physical decrepitude far less certain – we may well not have the time required to get there.

So, where should I start with blog 2.0? Writing blog 1.0 sometimes required the kind of attention usually reserved for drunken games of Jenga and cooking risotto – the former being far too fraught with possibility for me to even consider these days and the latter having become so routine a part of my existence that it now requires little conscious thought except in attempting to correctly double the amount of wine stated in the recipe. Going forward – nonsense phrase of the day as I have yet to find a way of taking my life backwards – I feel that I will have to come up with some kind of agenda which I will pin to the office wall. If it is anything like as efficient as my medication-taking regime, we may well all find ourselves at a loose end before the year is out.

It occurs to me that I should also probably tackle my tendency towards self-obsession, but I have no idea what that would leave for me to write about. Even when I write fiction I seldom actually create characters, but rather pick out threads of my own personality – almost always the ones that I would most like to eradicate – and magnify them. It is the only way I know to find empathy with the bad guys. It is the only way to give them a third dimension – unless of course they are politicians in which case, having two faces, they each have four dimensions, the fourth being naked, self-serving greed.

I have tried many ways of keeping up to date with WordPress Reader, but setting a few minutes aside before each writing stint seldom works as I always get drawn into the ‘Comments’ boards and either write nothing of my own or do it at 2am fuelled by coffee, chocolate and whisky – a regime which, as I have said, I have endeavoured to leave behind me (a task made much easier by my current lack of deadlines: everything can wait) so I tend to block read on my office laptop which has a screen of sufficient dimensions to ensure that I can see the words without resting my nose on it. I can lock myself away in my office and shut myself off from the world, but the world doesn’t care for that very much. It is insidious. It always finds a way in.

Managing distractions should be easy, but almost anything can get a grip on my attention: raindrops on windows, squirrels on fences, delivery drivers on my driveway, birds on feeders, who sang that, who wrote that, I wonder what time it is in Ulan Bator? It doesn’t take much.

Now, where was I?

Focus is the thing. I am really good at focus – compulsive almost – when things must be done, but far less so when completion is merely desirable. Latitude is something I should never be given – unless, of course, you are attempting to give me directions, in which case it could be very advantageous. I am capable of drifting off from almost anything and I spend much of my time trying to work out how to get back to where I was – if only I knew where that was.

I am, in truth, a bit of a rambler – except I hardly ever wear shorts and never with a knapsack – and where I go is hardly ever where I intended to go, so maybe detailed planning is not entirely feasible. I very much hope that this blog can offer a view of the world through the eyes of someone who is beginning to reap the harvest of sixty odd years of life. I do not want it to be about growing old, but about living with growing old. I don’t intend to regale you with a list of everything I have that is packing in, but to concentrate on everything on and within my body that is not giving in to the ravages of time. I can’t think of much at the moment, but leave it with me…

If I’m honest, the plan remains pretty much as it always was, to cock a snook at age and everything it brings with it (although, not with sufficient severity to annoy it to the extent that it buggers off and leaves me). Over the last few I have learned that I cannot ignore everything I am told (my wife is particularly adamant that I adhere to this particular principle in all my dealings with the medical profession – even when I would dearly like to believe that they don’t know what they’re talking about) but I can choose to not necessarily hear everything. My age makes that so much more believable. My mission is to catch old age with its pants down and to take a snapshot for all the world to see.

Your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to come along for the ride. You might as well. I mean let’s be honest, how long can it possibly take?

The Six Weeks of Christmas

I put myself through this every year and I have no idea why. It is normally sometime in the middle of November when I start to consider what to do for Christmas and, more troubling, whether I’ve actually done it all before. Now, I enjoyed writing last week’s post, but one week out from Christmas Eve I must admit that it didn’t seem to be altogether seasonal, so I decided that something altogether more uplifting would be necessary to rebalance the scales this week and consequently – as I tend to write this kind of nonsense well in advance of publication – here I am, over six weeks out from the big day fretting over what I have to say and attempting to jot down some kind of list of reasons to be cheerful. It is currently wet, windy, unseasonably warm and just the right side of gloomy to be unconducive to such enterprise. It might say ‘Cheerful’ on the front of the bus, but I have no idea what route I have to follow to get there.

Cheery is my default disposition, but if I’m honest, maintaining an equilibrium is often easier said than done. As human beings we begin life as a relatively blank slate: contented = asleep; uncomfortable, hungry, or fearful = crying – and life slowly rounds-off our corners, chips off our edges and gives us definition until, eventually, it reaches a stage where the cracks begin to show, erosion sets in and bits start to drop off. Remedial care and general repairs become a way of life. Common sense tells me that there can be very few people of my age without any ongoing health issues to contend with. It is a common maxim that laughter is the best medicine, but when you get to my age, paracetemol certainly runs it a close second.

For me, frustration is the heaviest burden: that I am not as fast, not as proficient, not as amusing as I once was. I know that I have started to repeat jokes – a real grandad thing to do – I do not always realise that I do not necessarily share common experience with people who are half my age. I am not, by today’s standards, terribly PC. Oh, and I repeat jokes…

I feel as though I have always been a little behind the curve: I remember the other boys at school sniggering about Master Bates in ‘Oliver Twist’ and not knowing why. I remember similar tittering at the mention of Hymen in ‘As You Like It’ and the embarrassment of having the reason for it explained to me by one of the more worldly wise boys in the class who, incidentally, claimed to have actually seen one. It is the main reason I have never been into bandwagon jumping: I know I would miss it and fall flat on my arse.

Naivety is, I think, my Super Power. I am often completely oblivious to the contempt in which I am being held by the wiser heads who can chuckle at double entendres in Classical Greek whilst I am left agonising over whether Rich Tea is funnier than custard cream. Give me a short-sighted character and a banana skin and I am happy. I really don’t have much time for the kind of jokes that require an explanation: man falls down open manhole = funny; man goes on to explain that the open grate is a metaphor for sexual dysfunction, less so. I do though, have a high tolerance level. I do not necessarily dislike those with whom I fundamentally disagree, as long as we can share chocolate and laugh about it afterwards. Harry Secombe once said that he always suffered fools gladly because he was one of them.

I am foolish enough to love Christmas – not the lights and the glitter, the crap jokes and the over-eating, not the unwanted gifts, the mistletoe, the alcohol, the chocolate… ok, all of the above if I’m honest – and while people are very eager to inform me that Father Christmas is not real I would argue that he certainly is – in spirit. I love the spirit of Christmas. Not the Christmas Gift Top Trumps of ‘see how much thought/money/physical queuing endeavour I put into your gift’ but the ‘Wow! A Freddo Bar, thank you,’ spirit. It is the ‘I love a mandarin,’ spirit. It is the scattering fragments of walnut shell over an area roughly equivalent to half a football pitch spirit. It is the ‘Fetch a hammer. Nobody could open an almond with these crackers,’ spirit. I love the Salvation Army at Christmas (although I deplore the fact that they are still needed.) How emotive is the sound of a brass band? I always equate the sublime film ‘Brassed Off’ with Christmas, simply because of the music, in much the same way as I now equate The Beach Boys ‘God Only Knows’ with the season because of its use in ‘Love Actually’. I cannot imagine any of it without ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’ – The Richard Attenborough version obviously – because some things are non-negotiable.

Writing Christmas posts troubles me. For weeks before they trouble me, yet nobody actually reads the posts I make over the Christmas period, they – quite rightly – have far better things to do, like finding a thousand disparate ways of wrapping a Lottery Scratchcard; calculating the defrosted weight of a turkey sufficient to feed twenty (including three vegetarians, one vegan, two meat-eaters who just don’t like turkey and would much prefer chicken, a Scandinavian in-law who would rather have herring and the kids who will only eat it if it is minced and covered in baked beans) and getting the sprouts on. It is not December if your house does not smell of brussel sprouts and red cabbage.

Anyway, here we are, for me it is actually November 12^th and for you it is probably December 21^st; I am looking forward to it all while you are probably already up to your neck in it. I always presume that most of my readers are of a similar age to myself and anticipating a nap in front of Strictly rather than a seasonal tumble from a new skateboard, so all I can advise is that you try to enjoy it as much as you possibly can. It might not be quite everything that we want, but Lord knows, we may not have too many of them left in us and, let’s face it, nothing quite compares with the thrill of watching the grandkids start to learn about dealing with disappointment when they open the monogrammed handkerchiefs you’ve bought them…

Time Travel

I try to write pretty much every day, even when we are on holiday. I have a little notebook which is full of scribbled scraps which, in my current once-a-week posting regime, will give me posts for weeks to come. Today is actually the last day of our little autumn jaunt, so if I was to use my scribbled missives chronologically on our return home it would be full-on UK winter by the time this particular little nosegay reached you. It has just ceased raining here in Turkey, but it remains overcast and windy. It is none-the-less warm and I am writing on our little sheltered balcony in circumstances (and shorts) that will be a far-off memory come the cold, bleak days of December back home.

I don’t suppose the UK is uniquely placed in this, but I do find it quite strange that a mere couple of hours jack-knifed into an aircraft seat can bring us to a place that seems to be a world away from where we started: a place where the sun shines most of the time, people smile and the postman doesn’t drop your parcel into the water butt if he finds no-one in. Being such a distance away from home does seem to have the effect of quieting the worry demons for a little while: the house might flood, burn down, get burgled but, as there is absolutely nothing I can do about it from here, there is no point in worrying about it. My daughters will deal with any immediate fallout and the rest of the shit can wait for my return – because that’s what shit does. Much like the holiday tan, it will all come out in the wash.

Not that people of my skin-type actually tan. Even if I’m really assiduous with sun-cream application I will still become a prickly pink vision within minutes and my dermis will litter the bed sheets long before I have had time to regret the ill-advised street food or inform my wife that we cannot leave the hotel room as I require unfettered bathroom access at all times.

We come from a country in which the water is clean, drinkable and, by and large, plentiful. We are truly blessed (although it doesn’t always feel like it when it’s piddling on your head day after day). So complacent are we that we even flush our toilets with the very same potable water that we drink and bathe in. Wherever we travel in the world, we are advised by our elders and betters against drinking the tap water. I have no idea how much of the bottled water we drink is actually decanted from the self-same taps, and I do not know whether we, as a nation, have a particular problem with water-borne particulates that means that we are unable to drink the same stuff as everybody else, but I obey unquestioningly. An army, they say, marches on its stomach. Our nation, it would seem, collapses on its lower intestine. Steam power and the industrial revolution may have been our gifts to the world, but the greatest reward we gave to ourselves was the flushing toilet.

Of course catering standards are much more universally… well, standard these days. The expectation is that the food in a decent holiday hotel will almost certainly not be fatal – something that cannot be said of many of our own Saturday night kebab shops. I am fortunate to have what I believe is described as a robust constitution, but even I have been forced to visit, from time to time, toilets that I would really rather forget – I do not have a robust bladder. I have been in the company of rats, flies, giant wasps and cockroaches that I would definitely think twice about challenging to an arm-wrestle – although nothing quite as exotic as the funnel web spider my wife encountered in an Australian dunny some years ago – and almost always I have remained conscious that in such circumstances I generally have only two options and the second one involves unpleasantly damp trousers, so I go for the former and get it over with as quickly as a dodgy prostate allows. These days, although you wouldn’t actually want to eat in them – or, being British, drink the tap water – most public conveniences worldwide are by and large fit for purpose.

Being English I am, of course, very aware that wherever we are in the world the only language I will be expected to speak is my own mother-tongue with the simple addition of a slightly enhanced volume. I learn ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Do you have a toilet?’ in the language of everywhere we visit and other than that rely on the power of interpretive dance for communication – although the mime for “Two beers please” is somewhat more straightforward than “Are your veggie burgers cooked in the same pig fat as the chicken dippers?”

And time itself passes differently on holiday. When we settle on our sunbeds in time for my wife to complain that the sun has gone in, I often have to explain that it is now 8pm and we are currently decanting our gear onto the tenth sun lounger of the day. A day by the pool is one spent in perpetual motion, flitting between locations that are either too shaded or too sunny whilst my wife struggles to come to grips with the notion that the Sun does not loiter in the same part of the sky all day, but keeps deliberately hiding itself behind a palm tree as soon as we have settled down. My holiday needs are extremely modest: an exercise book, a pen, a book book, a crossword book and my music and I am happy. My wife’s need to reconfigure the entire nature of our solar system is somewhat more difficult to reconcile. If I could stop the earth from spinning for her, I would, particularly if I could do it at the time of our holiday ‘Sundowner’, which always descends into getting ready for dinner far too quickly.

Anyway, it will all be behind me by the time you get to read this. My life will be filled with winter coats, hiccupping central heating boilers and my wife’s desire to fit a door in the space where we have just removed a wall. Thick duvets, closed curtains and warming stews are not the province of Dr Who, but that’s the problem with travel isn’t it, time just slips away from you…

Making it Up

In as much as I ever make conscious decisions about anything, I think I might just have made one: despite the fact that readers are in short supply for such things, I would really like to tell a few more ‘stories’ in my blog. Tales of my daily life are all well and good, but they begin to grate on even me after a while.

That is not to say, of course, that a certain level of fantasy does not manage to poke its nose into my standard autobiographical tripe every now and then anyway. My recollections are truthful, but the finer details may well not hold up in court. I don’t lie – I’m sure I tried it as a child and quickly became aware of my limitations – but I am prone to exaggeration and when it appears in something that is obviously ‘made up’ I feel less guilty about it.

On a past holiday my wife went to bed and found, under her pillow, a tarantula. It was an actual tarantula and when my wife tells the story people look aghast and say, “Wow! What did you do?”, but when I tell the story they say “Wow! What did she do?” whilst thinking “Here we go again: Colin and another monster arachnid story.” I feel like the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ (or possibly ‘Fenrir!’) I don’t exaggerate for any kind of aggrandisement. It is just the way I tell ‘em. If misfortune strikes me twice, it is generally not that funny, but if it does it twenty times… (Many years ago, a writer friend – a bona fide ‘writer’ – told me that even numbers are never funny. “Always go for odd,” he said. It has become my mantra.)

I think that all writers (and I include myself among them simply because I write, which is odd because I have just spent the last few weeks painting and I certainly don’t consider myself a decorator) express their own opinions through the thoughts and words of their characters. Given the original mission statement of this blog I feel that I should hear more from Frankie & Benny and, particularly when my bile is rising, from the Meaning of Life crew. I also have my own particular soft spot for the ever-bickering couple who are forced to spend five minutes together in the car so I will return to them and see how they feel about what will almost certainly turn out to be arthritis in the wrist. Other Little Fictions may well have run their course for now, but will no doubt gift me with another idea when I’m not looking for one and I will run with it. I am a slave to whim.

I would like to say that I have decided to stick more closely to my original intent of considering the implications of growing older, but there’s every chance that I will forget ever saying it by the time I write my next post, because this, for me, has become the age of enlightenment. Think I can do everything I used to be able to do? I’m almost certainly about to be enlightened on that score. Life these days enlightens me in so many ways. Can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t roll down the hill with the kids? Life will definitely enlighten me – probably the next morning.

I constantly find myself amazed at how much I thought I knew and how much I now realize that I never did… and if I did, I’ve now forgotten. Do you remember when you were young and people used to say “He’s forgotten more than you will ever know,” and all you could think was “Yes, but he’s still forgotten it.” What is possibly to be gained by asking someone what they’ve forgotten, they’ve bloody forgotten it! You now know just as much as they do – no matter how dumb you are.

My memory has a fairly unique outlook on life: It allows me to remember most of the ‘big stuff’: my name, my address, whilst becoming increasingly hazy on day of the week and what my wife said to me two minutes ago. I find I remember almost everything I don’t need to and forget almost everything I am expressly told not to. It is the stuff of fiction.

Now, where was I?

Knowing When to Stop

…In which I tentatively dip my toes back into this big wonderful blogoverse…

As the building work has progressed I have found any number of little things that to my eyes do not appear to be quite right and which, thanks to my almost total inability to leave well alone, I have since managed to make immeasurably worse. Door doesn’t close quite as I think it should? No problem, slight adjustment, I can do that. So I do and now it doesn’t close at all. Or open. Surely that pipe just needs… erh, does anyone know where the stop tap is? Why is that electric socket wonky? No problem, I’ll just take it off the wall and… ‘Hello doctor. Exactly how long have I been unconscious?’ It is something I must address.

There are many things that I have discovered about myself over the last few weeks – principal among them: I am not as young as once I was. I had no idea that I even possessed this number of areas in which it is possible to ache. Having raised two children, I had no idea it was possible to feel this tired. My day begins at 6am so that I can be ready for the arrival of the builders, and finishes somewhere between 8 and 9pm having cleaned up after them and carried out all of the daily tasks I was unable to do whilst they were there.

The builders are not here at weekends, but fear not, I am awake just as early because, as my wife gleefully points out, we have only two days to fit in our between tradesmen tasks; chief among them slopping paint onto every conceivable surface: I had no idea there were so many types of emulsion. Nor did I know that so many people hold such strong, and divergent, opinions on the correct water/paint ratio for a mist coat on new plaster. I went for 30/70 but, if I’m honest, the measurements did become rather more slapdash as the day ground on and, in any case, the resulting mixture always appeared to congeal like school custard throughout its period of use.

Fortunately my ‘patience threshold’ has actually improved over the years. I do not get nearly as frustrated by things, people and, crucially, myself as I used to do. ‘Things’ cannot help it. They are just things. They have no sentient existence, they are manufactured or appropriated for a purpose that they either fulfil or fail and whichever way it goes, I now realise that I should feel grateful to make it through with all ten fingers. People have their own problems – I could well be among them – and their own ‘things’ to contend with. The biggest problem I pose for myself is knowing when to stop.

Ironically, my problem is not in knowing when not to start: I am more than happy to cast my eye over something and say, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ Knowing my own limitations greatly enhances my admiration for those who do not have them. But when I decide that I can do something and events (as they inevitably do) conspire to prove me wrong, I have a complete inability to let it go. Somehow I just don’t know how to give in. …And it’s not failure itself that is a problem for me. Lord knows I’m familiar enough with that. It is the depth of my own ineptitude that drives me on. When I can’t understand why I am unable to do something, I will bloody well keep trying until I can – even if disaster lurks around every corner.

Screwing up a shelf is easy work: really screwing it up is the job of an expert. Replastering the aftermath can be how hard? I’ve seen people do it. It looks so easy… mind you, they don’t have a wonky shelf set against a wall that looks like it has been created for a re-enactment of Paschendale. I do. I have suggested to my wife that I can make it better, but she is unconvinced to the point of threatening divorce. She will ‘get somebody in’ and I know that she is right, they will do all they can to make it as close to perfect as possible… and there’s the problem. There is bound to be just that 0.01% that could do with just a little restorative attention. And we all know where that leads…

The Dust that Obscures the Funny Side

Life, somehow, continues to crowd in on me and prevents my return to the regular blog posting I crave. The fevered ‘knocking about’ of our little bungalow continues at the builders pace and various problems requiring prolonged attention plop down around us with frightening regularity. I have completely dropped any attempt to plan my days and weeks: plans, it would appear, have no veracity unless they constantly change. The garden, driveway and street beyond look like a post-apocalyptical builder’s merchant. Somehow the building is rising from it all like a rose from horse shit and the promise of the finish to the ‘outside work’ draws near. Unfortunately that merely heralds the start of the dreaded ‘inside work’, a temporary kitchen in the wooden ‘lean-to’, a mini-sitting room in the smallest bedroom and constant ‘decision making’ (made in haste and regretted before the words have left the lip) whilst the living crap is beat out of the rest of the place. We have been here before, many years ago, and I’m still cleaning the dust out of my ears.

My brother’s wedding, and my date with best-man speech-making duties, lies ahead. That date, at least, is firmly etched on the household calendar. Happily, behind me now is ‘the stag do’. I am happy to drink, but I really am not good at ‘going out drinking’: whilst copious volumes of alcohol are not generally a problem to me, a high litreage of beer does tend to put an unwelcome stress on a delicate prostate. Moreover, whilst whisky and wine leave me largely unaffected, beer in volume – the stag-do must-consume – turns me into a jellyfish. (I have a well-defined limit which I defiantly refuse to pass – until I have reached it.) This particular stag, comprising a small posse of men of my age was a daytime affair and finished by teatime – as, indeed was I. My wife drove me home whilst I babbled nonsensically beside her before giving me a meal and sending me to bed. I slept for twelve hours and woke up as if nothing had happened. My clothes were folded and in drawers – although not necessarily the right ones – I was in my own bed and my wife had slept beside me without once (that I am aware of) attempting to kill me. It would appear that the old ‘auto-pilot’ continues to perform perfectly through the beer-haze, just as it did when I was younger, when it was given very much more practice.

We are just over a week away from the wedding now and my speech is written. It seems worse with every reading, but I am at a loss to know what to do with it. I will learn it as well as I can, make myself some crib-cards and hope that everyone else is either drunk by the time I stand up, or overwhelmed by a sense of sober bonhomie. I was hoping that I might gather some ‘material’ from the stag, but all I really learned is that I am particularly bad at genitalia-themed crazy golf and that my brother is becoming ever-more absorbed by his hobby of fishing. There are a few double-entendres to be found there – but only if you know the names of fish.

I am writing this in my little ‘office’, surrounded by the boxes full of household possession we have removed from the upcoming dust tsunami. The builders have gone and will not return until sometime around dawn tomorrow. In truth, the builders are brilliant, engaging and pleasant to be around – even if the noise and mess that accompanies them is not. What is it they say about making omelettes and breaking eggs? Stick to porridge I think. I am writing this because I thought I needed to offer a little explanation for the sporadic nature of my contributions of late and I feel that I should explain that I have no intention of becoming an ex-blogger just yet. Sooner or later the funny side will flash its arse at me again and I will be back.

You have been warned!

Getting On

I stand at the portal that will allow me entry into a new age of discovery. The doormen of Nirvana have found me to be on the list and have grudgingly agreed to let me in. There are many benefits to belonging to the club that I will shortly join: I can take tea and biscuits with my fellow sexagenarians in the designated café; I can board the bus to Rhyl with a half-empty suitcase and a clear conscience; Lord knows! I may eligible for a discount on a stair-lift or a sit-in bath. I have reached the age when I understand that I should always smile sweetly at the dentist, because to gnash my teeth at his suggestion that I need several long-haul holidays-worth of dental treatment is merely putting money in his already bulging pockets. I have attained the maturity that allows me to comprehend that the true joy of an April day by the east coast seaside cocooned within fourteen layers of thermal clothing to protect against the unseasonal scything on-shore breeze and draped in a slightly too small cagoule that herds the interminable arctic drizzle into the large drips that run around the rim of the hood before depositing themselves into the ever-swelling puddle on my crotch, whilst I push fish and chips around the paper as they congeal in front of my eyes, is the knowledge that there is no point in doing it, other than knowing that I don’t have to do it – but, shit, while I can, I will. I have begun to appreciate the myriad joys of getting older. A whole new world of revelation has opened up before me. I have entered, in short, a second phase of enlightenment and realisation.

I have opened my mind to learning, although, truth be told, most of what I have learned is how little I know. My discoveries, such as they are, are modest – they are not of Newtonian proportions. What I have not discovered would generate a ‘to do’ list that could keep Isaac and his apple occupied for a very long time. I have not discovered, for instance, what makes me (or more appositely, they being on the bottom, Australians) stick to this globe of ours. I tend to adhere to the Velcro Theory. In fact, I find myself irresistibly drawn towards the flat earth theory, simply because I do not understand why, wherever I go in the world, I am always the right way up. Hold up a football and put something on the bottom of it; what happens? Yup. If the world is actually a sphere, what prevents the Australians falling off? Forget gravity. Gravity is everywhere. It can’t even hold my glass on the table after six pints. And also, if the world is a globe, how come all the water doesn’t flow to the bottom? Never thought that through did you Pythagoras?

Mind you, I must admit that physics was never one of my strengths. I can still recall the look on the face of my teacher when he read my test paper aloud to the class, with special emphasis on the question ‘What is resistance’, to which I had answered ‘Futile’. I thought I was being endearingly amusing. He thought I was being an arse. Guess who was correct? I would never discover a new continent, even if one were to exist, because that would almost certainly involve sailing off into the unknown and, quite frankly, I have enough trouble sailing off into the known – and only then when I have double-checked the catering arrangements. And as for finding a new planet, I can barely see the television in these contact lenses, let alone an infinitesimal blob at the far end of the universe. No, the things that I have learned are of a much more personal nature. I do not know if they will make a difference to the lives of others. I do not know if they were at any time unknown to others. What I am beginning to know, I think, is what everybody else has known all along.

I have discovered that stairs are arranged singly for a reason; there is nothing to be gained by ascending them two at a time. I know that escalators move so that you do not have to. I have learned that there are only two types of shoe; those that fit and those that look good: no single pair of shoes is ever able to meet both criteria. I have learned that rows of buttons are always to be fastened from the bottom in order to avoid having one left over at the end. I have learned that hats are for other people.

I have begun to understand that there is no point whatsoever in attempting to take a photograph with my mobile phone. Nobody is even faintly interested in a close-up of my nasal hair, nor do the staff of The Raj Palace want another silent call from me. I have grown to realise that I have lost the innate ability I once had to know instantly whether an acquaintance was older or younger than I. Everyone of my age looks so very old. I have begun to understand that no-one younger than me actually sees me as younger than I am. That the way I viewed people of my age when I was my daughter’s age is exactly the way that people of my daughter’s age now view me – eccentric; mildly amusing in a ‘let’s just humour him’ kind of way, but definitely to be kept at arm’s length as the risk of slight urine/saliva contamination is ever-present and increasing. I have discovered that the only thing more annoying than a younger man in an extremely expensive car is an older man in an extremely expensive car. I have begun to realise that nobody ever gained anything from arguing (except, for some, a lucrative career). Stealth is the answer. Age gives one the time to wait and the insight to appreciate that there is absolutely no finer moment than the acutely timed ‘I warned you that would happen, but you never listen do you? Oh no. You always know best…’

I have also begun to understand that advancing age is not to be feared, it is to be embraced. Embraced for its ability to allow me clearer vision than sight. Embraced for its ability to grant me the realisation that what is right for me, may not be right for anybody else, but quite frankly, that I care even less than they do. Embraced for the realisation that my appreciation of the world around me is linked, incrementally, with the paucity of time that I have left to enjoy it. Embraced because I have no choice. Embraced because it makes me happy.

First published 16.11.2018 – and from which this whole sheboodle got a title…

Mission Statement

After a week away from the pad and pencil I thought it wise, before I once again set myself against the wordy rockface, to remind myself just exactly what I thought I was doing here so, this week, before getting down to my usual weekly process of testing your patience as far as I dare, I thought that it might be useful for me to re-view the very first two posts I ever posted on this blog: my mission statement…

I feel that I should begin my first blog with an explanation of what it is, exactly, that I intend to do over the next however long I am given: it might give you an idea of whether you are going to bother with it, and it might help to remind me what it was I had started when I return to it after pouring a glass of red and half-eating a jam and peanut butter sandwich. My intention is to observe life through the eyes of an older person – I have no choice in this, I am one – and to lay what I have seen before you in such a manner that it might take your mind off the pre-paid funeral plan for a few minutes (unless, of course, you really want that free Parker pen). I do not intend it to be about getting old, but merely the product of a mind and body that is itself slipping inexorably downhill, gathering both speed and mass, clinging on to all the dignity it can muster whilst understanding that the inevitable pratfall into the dog-shit of life lays merely inches away. I do not intend to focus solely on the experience of being an older male, but being one, it might just go that way. Just think of it as a thousand words(ish) a week window into the soul. Actually, probably less a window into my soul and more a knot-hole into my psyche. I am aware that I cannot properly see life from the perspective of someone I am not. I try, believe me, I try, but almost inevitably just as soon as I think I have got this empathy thing licked, I unwittingly put my foot in it up to my ears and, having apologised for all I am worth, write myself a note to remind me not to make that mistake again… and then lose it…

There will be, I am sure, some nostalgic twaddle; some howling at the moon; some ‘how shit things used to be’; some ‘how shit things are now’; some ‘why can’t I remember what it is I wanted to say when I started this…?’ It is my hope that people of my age may be able to wring some scintilla of truth or recognition from it, whilst those younger people amongst you may regard it as some sort of instructional tract; providing nuggets of information that you may recall at apposite times when interacting with we vintage souls (and possibly mopping up after us).

We are all getting older. Life is a one way street and we are all heading into the same cul-de-sac. The people around you can erect speed bumps and you can apply the handbrake all you like, but in the end you’ll realise that the only sensible thing you can do is to floor the clutch and enjoy the scenery. And don’t think that science is going to save you. I’m certainly not going to argue with Einstein, if he says time-travel is possible, then I’m sure it must be… but I’ve seen the films: the Captains Kirk and Picard discovered, as did Marty McFly, that even when you travel back in time, you yourself remain the same age; still getting older. Wherever you sit on the space/time continuum, you plod on, just the same. Wherever you go, you become older just getting there. So, what could be the point of going back in time if everything around you got younger whilst you continued to plough on relentlessly through your allotted span? Very little – unless, of course you’ve got an unopened pack of smoked salmon that has gone beyond its sell-by date or your egg yolk isn’t runny enough…

We all claim that we don’t feel any different to how we felt twenty, thirty, forty years ago when, in fact, we are all that little bit weaker, slower and less able; incapable of stretching without farting. Getting older is not just about what you see, what you hear and feel, but what you do and how you do it. Do you wonder how Pooh and Eeyore cope with the associated problems of sagging kapok, slackened stitching and Christopher Robin’s animalistic grandchildren; how Sherlock Holmes copes with the diminution of a giant intellect; how James Bond copes with stress incontinence? I’ll look into it.

And age is not all about loss. Age also brings us gifts: the self-knowledge that we regularly mistake for wisdom. The ability to think ‘Actually, that is not what I would do, but, let’s be honest, what does it matter.’ The knowledge that you are not going to be hanged for wearing non-matching socks and that no-one will notice if you’re wearing your pants back to front may be liberating. I, myself, have heard the siren call of primary colour trousers and Velcro shoes, and like Odysseus, I am desperately clinging to the mast of sanity, attempting to resist them. To be honest, once you’ve passed 50, nobody takes a great deal of notice what you’re wearing. Wear what you have always worn and they’ll smile sweetly and enquire whether you have actually changed that cardi at all this year. Wear something different and they’ll think you’ve had a stroke. It is better to continually keep checking that you’ve remembered to zip up your fly than to wait for someone to tell you that you haven’t. Again…

Age will gift you an insatiable thirst for knowledge. All knowledge. A desire to learn all of the things you did not learn while you were capable of learning them. Infinite curiosity will keep you alive and vital and the desire to experience will drive you crazy. If you are physically capable of doing it, then do it. You may hate it, but at least you’ve tried it and you’ll never have to do it again – like eating oysters and drinking Saké, you’ll know better next time.

The accumulation of new hobbies becomes a hobby in itself. Never tried it? Give it a go. Immerse yourself; soak it up until you’re semi-proficient; pack it up; find something new. Don’t be put off by those who might say ‘You can’t do that’. They might be right, but bugger them frankly, give it a go anyway. If it doesn’t work, you can laugh about it over a super-strength gin and tonic and spit an olive stone at the back of their neck when they’re not looking.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. Join me. If I cannot persuade you to laugh in the face of danger then at least I might encourage you to snigger in the ear’ole of adversity.

First published 15.11.2018 when I was not yet sixty…