A Timely Reminder

Age never fails to remind you that you are never quite as good at anything as you used to be: a situation that is greatly exacerbated when ‘it’s been a while’ and you’re faced with the dawning realisation that in reality you might not have been ‘all that’ in the first place.

I always believed that I was ok at sport – not great, but ok: always in the team, but always just a hair’s breadth away from substitute: generally brought into the squad with the realisation that there was a particularly unglamorous role left to fill when the cry went up “Colin will do it” which, of course, I did. In cricket I could not bowl to save my life, but I could give the ball a fair old whack. I didn’t have the finesse required to be opening bat, nor the doggedness to hold up one end whilst the other, more gifted batter did his stuff, but I was well worth a bash in a run chase. In football I was never a striker and I was much too short to be a goalkeeper or a defender, but I was ‘tenacious’ and if there’s one thing that school sports teachers love, it’s a boy who gets ‘stuck in’, so I got that role: win the ball, make the easy pass and allow the talented players to do something with it. I thrived in the team doing the job that nobody else wanted to do. In rugby, being neither big nor particularly fast, I found my role as scrum-half, a role which, to the best of my memory, involved getting jumped on by the bigger members of the opposition with a frightening regularity. I was never one of the boys that the girls came to watch.

Athletics was not then, nor is now, in any way ‘my bag’. I can chase a ball, but there is always someone who is much quicker. I could never sprint, I could never jump either far nor high and I most certainly could not run long distances, but I did discover that I had some kind of talent for chucking stuff so, by and large, that’s what I did. I was definitely lacking in brawn, but I worked on a technique of sorts and I did ok – still didn’t get the girls mind – and I am fully aware that however limited I was then, I am far more so now.

And of course, it’s not only sport where this retrograde scale of attainment comes into play. There was a time when faced with a task I knew I could not do, I would think “What could possibly go wrong?” and do it anyway. These days I know exactly what could go wrong. I have experience, although not always enough to stop me giving it a go. Sadly my ability to persevere until things somehow fell into place has definitely waned and I now have a contacts list full of people who exist solely to dig me out of a hole just as soon as I have sense enough to realise that I am badly out of my depth.

My ‘party trick’ when I was younger was to make up a rhyme or limerick instantly from a single word prompt. I can still do it, but I need twenty four hours notice these days. Nothing works quite as quickly as once it did; nothing is quite so strong… nor quite so watertight.

I always thought that my writing was ok, and I suppose it is, for me. The knowledge that I will never write a best seller is ok. Jeffrey Archer wrote those and look where it got him. I look back on some of the things I wrote years ago and, despite the fact that nobody would touch them then, part of me thinks that actually they were alright. Through the years I always seem to have teetered on the line between success and failure, more often than not tripping over kismet and falling head over heels into ‘nearly there’. These days I realise that it was just the way that things were meant to be: perseverance seldom pays the dividends of good fortune. So I grew to understand that whilst even in my prime I was never really ‘all that’, I am one step further away from it now and will almost certainly see it as only the faintest of dots on the horizon before my eyesight gives in. If I’m honest, I’m happy with that. Accepting the way that things are, is something that I’m getting much better at. Understanding that they’re not as good as they used to be is just something that comes with age – and being even further from getting the girls…

Frankie & Benny 13 – Jiggery Pokery

“So, what shall we do today then Benny?”
“Do?”
“Yes, ‘do’. We can’t just sit here all day drinking tea can we.”
“Can’t we?”
“No we can’t. The surgeon said that in order to justify the health service’s investment in the several hundreds of pounds worth of surgical jiggery pokery he inserted into your body, it was up to you to turn your life around.”
“Stents, Frankie, he fitted stents. Like those little springs you get in cheap biros. They keep the arteries open.”
“Well then, clearly I exaggerate with my ‘several hundreds of pounds’: sounds like he might have raided Poundland for his supplies. Couldn’t he find something a little bit more hi-tech?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What about something they’d grown in a lab, what about Green Therapy?”
“Do you mean Gene Therapy?”
“I don’t think so. Didn’t he sing Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa?”
“Oh very droll my comedian friend. I think you will find that you are referring to Gene Pitney who, incidentally, died from a heart attack.”
“Well more fool him. Look, the doctor said that you need to become a new you, so I am attempting to become a new me, so that together we can become a new we.”
“A new old we. Seriously Frankie, what will we gain from all this newness?”
“I don’t know Benny, but I think that maybe we should give it a go. I don’t think that I could face breaking in a new pal at my age if you die.”
“I am not going to die Frankie. I am like The Bionic Man.”
“Thanks to half a dozen bits of old ballpoint?”
“They’re actually a bit more sophisticated than that, but basically yes. I’m fitter now than I’ve been for years.”
“Well, it’s from a low starting point isn’t it, if we’re honest.”
“…How many press-ups can you do Frankie?”
“Press-ups? I can’t remember when I was last close enough to the ground to press myself up from it if I’m honest. The last time I was down anywhere below waist level I was searching under the butcher’s counter for dropped change when I found myself ten pence short for a steak bake.”
“…I can do ten.”
“Ten?”
“Yes, the doctor asked me how many press-ups I could do and I told him ten.”
“And you can actually do them?”
“Are you mad? It would probably kill me. It is what we call a theoretical exercise old chum. I am particularly good at them it turns out.”
“I think the doctor probably wanted to know if you do any actual exercise Benny, you know, walk to the biscuit tin, open your own crisps, that kind of thing.”
“We used to walk to the pub every day didn’t we, I must have been really fit then.”
“You had a heart attack.”
“Other than that.”
“The doctor told you to stop going to the pub all the time didn’t he? He told you to stop eating pies.”
“He also told me to put a tenner on Minor Surgery in the 3.10 at Kempton Park and it came bloody nowhere. Look, I’m not a fool Frankie, I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live by boring myself to death. I don’t want to regret not doing all of the things I really shouldn’t have been doing all along. Most particularly Frankie, I do not want you fussing over me.”
“I wouldn’t call it fussing.”
“You took the batteries out of the TV remote yesterday so that I had to get out of my chair to change the channel, you hid my Yo-Yos. I definitely preferred you when you were an arse.”
“I didn’t hide your Yo-Yos!”
“Really?”
“No, I ate them. I didn’t want them going to waste if they were going to make you ill.”
“Well that’s a weight off my mind then Frankie: my foil-wrapped tea-time delights were not actually abducted by aliens, but scoffed by my eldest friend who is, by the way, clearly still an arse.”
“An arse who has only today purchased you a pack of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers.”
“Caramel wafers? …Are they out of date?”
“Would it bother you if they were?”
“The Caramel Wafer, Frankie, is a chocolate covered allegory for true friendship: a brown, rectangular metaphor for brotherly love. Of course it wouldn’t bother me.”
“Good.”
“So?”
“I found them in the Bargain Bin at the Spar.”
“But they’re still in date, look.”
“Really?”
“Yes, so why were they in the Bargain Bin?”
“I’m not sure. Could it have been an administrative cock-up perhaps?”
“Possibly. Or mayhap a stingy old bugger swapping the yellow labels again?”
“Shall I put the kettle on?”
“Well, you could Frankie, but I always believe that these red and gold foil-wrapped little sweetmeats are best suited to something a little more peaty.”
“Peaty?”
“Yes my friend, something nicely barrel-aged and peaty.”
“Well, I’m not sure what you are referring to, but if you mean that shite whisky you buy from the mini-mart, it’s more like nappy-strained and boggy.”
“You don’t want it then?”
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions here Benny. There is much to be said for mud-flavoured alcohol as the natural choice to accompany Mr Tunnock’s very finest creation. I’ll get the glasses. Will you have some water in it?”
“It already has water in it my friend. I believe that it is part of the way it is made. It would be dismissive of the skills employed by the Master Distiller to impose amateur dilution to his product.”
“I’m not sure that this has been made by a Master Distiller, Benny. It smells like it might have been produced by a camel if I’m honest.”
“Yes well, the time for words has passed now old chum, it is time for action: pour me the water of life.”
“Ah, an elixir. Slainte.”
“Slainte… Say ‘hello’ to my more than adequately rested liver, little whisky.”
“Are you ok to be coughing like that? I don’t want you popping your stitches.”
“I think I might have the water in it after all.”
“Perhaps if we get something that has aged a little more than six weeks next time.”
“No, it will be fine, I just need to prepare myself. Sneak up on it…”
“Well, I’d prefer it if you didn’t cough. I don’t want to be around you if you tear one of your new seams.”
“I don’t have any seams. I keep telling you, it’s been weeks now Frankie, I am completely healed and fully prepared for this little nightcap.”
“It’s midday Benny.”
“Yes, so what will you be doing after the second wafer and an accompanying supplementary nip, my friend?”
“Possibly a pre-lunch nap I admit.”
“To dream of pie.”
“I don’t think a pie is wise Benny. I think you should probably ease yourself back into the game. Perhaps a salad would be better.”
“Do we have any salad?”
“I very much doubt it. I think I might have a jar of pickled beetroot and oily fish is good I think: I’ve got some tinned pilchards.”
“Will they make me live longer?”
“I think so.”
“Then I think I’d sooner die with a pie…”

N.B. Supermarkets here all put yellow reduced price labels on food here as it approaches its sell-by date.

My two favourite recurring characters, these two last appeared in episode 12 – Coronary (11.12.24)…

Should you be interested, you can also find epsiode 1
episode 2 – Goodbyes
episode 3 – The Night Before
episode 4 – The Birthday
episode 5 – Trick or Treat
episode 6 – Christmas
episode 7 – The Cold
episode 8 – Barry
episode 9 – Vaccinations
episode 10 – Anniversary
episode 11 – Dunking
I always re-read myself back into these two before I begin to write them. They are both me, but I have to recall which piece is which…

Without the Long-Term Commitment

So, you’ll know the moment – I’m sure you’ll know the moment – I think we all know the moment, when you are ill, or you’re low, or your mouth has run away with you – again – and you go to bed thinking “Things will be so much better in the morning. If I can just get a good night’s sleep, everything will be brighter: my cold will have gone, my mood will have lifted, I will not be outed as some kind of anti-religious bigot by the vicar’s wife.” Well, I have to tell you – I am sure you will already know – that things are seldom better in the morning: if you have a cold, the snot is still there, in fact it may have filled your entire head and congealed into something resembling a pea-green panna cotta. Colds do not get better overnight. Colds only ever improve following the consumption of malt whisky. Colds liquidize the brain and then let it dribble out through the nose. Every single thought is solidified into a single impulse to find a means of breathing that does not involve a slack jaw, permanent drool and the sound of a camel gargling custard.

It is a peculiar type of optimism that relies on sleep for a cure when sleep is so difficult to come by: when the difficulty in breathing is magnified ten-fold at the moment the head hits the pillow; when the face has closed the doors on oxygen. Sleep is not going to come easily, when the possibility of never waking up is so present.

Perhaps the belief that sleep will bring relief to aching bodily infrastructure is more logical. Muscles may well be able to use the hours of idleness to repair and refresh, but equally they may choose to use them to set like stone. A small 8pm tweak can easily turn into complete calcification by 8am, and joints that in youthful vigour would have used the hours of darkness to self-lubricate now throw up the barriers, sing La Marsellaise and declare that, henceforth, they ‘will not be moved’. Sleep, with age, merely allows the body to magnify its woes before the morning comes. Each ailment struggles to enhance its performance in a bodily version of Top Trumps. Tumbling into bed a fit and mobile man can, these days, precede the possibility of waking up with rigor mortis. Only the ability to moan loudly will stand between you and the hearse. An unexpected posterior eructation could be the only thing to alert those around you to the presence of enduring existence: “Excuse me for asking, but do corpses normally fart?”
“No vicar. Nor do they smell quite that bad.”

Sleep after a day of vigorous activity – which at this age could include anything from tying one’s own shoelaces to removing the cellophane from a ready meal – will almost certainly allow the introduction of superglue between all moveable surfaces. Both body and mind deteriorate through the night time hours. There are occasions when you may sleep for eight hours only to wake up years older and yet the medical mantra remains unchanged: “Get more sleep. It will all be better in the morning.” Try taking a worry to bed and see how much better that is after a night spent fixating on a worse-than-worse-case scenario that appears, with the breaking of dawn, to be the only viable outcome. What starts the evening as a flickering light bulb becomes bankruptcy, homelessness and a strange fungal infection that no amount of sleeping will put right.

Sleep is not medicine, it is a void into which the crap of the day falls and festers. I currently have the kind of cold that will only allow sleep if I take it in an upright position. When I wake in the morning – as long as I am not being too presumptuous in that assumption – it will not have gone. It will have taken its opportunities. Ancient man learned to sleep through the night because he came to realise what a pain in the butt staying awake could be: hours drag in the darkness, fires need stoking, feet need warming and the telly’s crap. Waking up is the only good news about waking up. (Not waking up is definitely bad news.) If I’m lucky, my cold will improve during the day and I will find the kind of sleep that feels as though it will not make things worse. And then I’ll need to pee – you know that moment – I’m sure you know that moment…

“Sleep is death without the long-term commitment.” – Lea Krinksky

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?

Walking Right Into It (Second Half)

So here I am, feeling pretty smug because I did it! Not a big deal in the greater scheme of things I know, but to me it feels like a bit of a game changer. I learned a lot about walking football and a whole lot more about me.

I won’t pretend that I didn’t spend the last few minutes before setting off in trying to talk myself out of it because I did, but the arrival of ‘a workman’ with a ‘five minute job’ to complete Just as I was about to leave actually worked for me because I became anxious that I would be late and I hate being late, so as soon as he had finished, I jumped into the car and set off without another thought in my head other than arriving on time. I got out of the car and found myself striding across to the pitch, half way there before I realised what I was doing. There were already a lot of people warming up, changing, chatting and I walked in, said “Hi, I’m Colin. I’ve come to play,” and it was done. No way of turning back.

Let me deal first with some of my many misconceptions and fears. I was, by the time the two matches kicked off, one of probably thirty players. Every single one of the twenty nine others was welcoming, shook my hand, introduced themselves by name – which there is zero chance of me remembering – and took me in. A number of them told me, “Don’t be fooled by our age, none of us has lost our competitive spirit,” which cheered me greatly. In fact, looking around, I was certainly towards the upper end of the age range and, when the games started it was immediately apparent that many of my fears were misplaced. The first thing I noticed was that ‘walking football’ involves an awful lot of running about whenever you think that you might be able to get away with it and whilst tackling from behind is, indeed, frowned upon, tackling from the front is alive and well. I have a double-sized purple ankle to prove it.

After twenty-five minutes I was gasping for water, after fifty I was gasping for air and after seventy five I would have liked to have played for thirty more. The pitches are small and with seven or eight-a-side (depending in which game you find yourself) relatively crowded, so you are constantly on the move and – with a three-touch rule in place – looking to pass the ball as soon as you receive it. This is not my game – in as much as I ever had one – and remembering that I I must not pass ahead of my teammates as they cannot run but to their feet so that they can pass it as far away from me as possible is proving tricky. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t properly rusty: I’ve done little but kick-about with the grandkids for the last few years, but despite the fact that I realise I was in the main a liability, I wasn’t totally abject and everybody seemed happy to have me there so I am confident that within a couple of weeks I will be properly back in the swing: still crap, but as good as I can be. I was actually praised because I didn’t get penalised for running which, apparently, almost everybody does at first although, if I’m honest, I’m not sure how I feel about that. Damned by faint praise I think. It’s probably no surprise that ‘my side’ (orange bibs) lost badly. The other side, they told me, contained many of the best players. I think they were probably trying to make me feel better.

But here’s the thing, I will go back next week and if the chance arises I will go for that ‘social’ afterwards (I wasn’t quite that brave in week one.) Names and faces will come to me slowly and eventually I might even be able to put them together correctly. Because I was unsure whether there would be a ‘week two’ for me I was wearing a pair of crappy old trainers which everyone told me were not suitable for the artificial pitch. I think they were hoping that my out-of-practice ineptitude would be remedied by the correct footwear. Well I’m definitely prepared to give it a bash. I’ll buy a pair before I go back.

I was called over by the organiser at the end who reminded me that I was welcome to join them for a drink and a chat, but I declined. I will face that hurdle in the future. He then showed me the contents of the rucksack he had with him. It contained the most comprehensive First Aid kit I think I have ever seen including a defibrillator. “We’ve had it five years,” he said, “and haven’t had to use it yet. I’m pleased you didn’t need it.” I told him to catch up on the instructions and I’d see what I could do next week. He smiled, I’m not sure why. Could have been the joke, or it could have been indigestion, for which he almost certainly had the cure in his bag.

Anyway there you are, I went and I will go back. I learned that walking football is not a stroll in the park and that at least thirty other people in the village do not want it to be; I learned that I can do things alone and that, by and large, people don’t mind having me around, and I learned that retribution for a kick on the ankle is much easier to achieve with people of your own age, but almost impossible to justify.

Walking Right Into It (First Half)

I will begin by laying my cards on the table: I am not blessed with confidence: I am plagued by doubt and hounded by social ineptitude and yet I seldom do things alone. It is rare for me to even enter a pub or a restaurant on my own and I would never consider going to the cinema, a concert or any form of social gathering alone. I will do anything in company, I will go anywhere as long as somebody I know will be there with me, but meeting new people, unsupported, takes me further from my comfort zone than Velcro underwear. Now I don’t want you thinking that I am somehow conspiring to encourage you to believe that I am in some way pathetic, because that would imply that it might take some kind of effort to persuade you of it. Frankly I think that a certain portion of my psyche – could be ego, could be id, could be Maureen, I just don’t know – must have stopped developing in childhood. Whatever the cause, I have spent a lifetime wanting to do things that I almost inevitably never did.

I played football until my late fifties when I realised that I had to stop for the good of my health. Not because I was physically unable to compete, but because I was mentally unable to accept that I would be kicked by people who were less than half my age, against whom retribution would appear, at best, churlish. Through the long dark years of Covid, when we were all forced into prolonged periods of solitude, I took up running (chronicled in this blog in many ‘Running Man’ posts) for a couple of years until my hips, knees and ankles began to catch up on me. In truth it was always me versus running, and in the end running won.

I am aware that at my age I need to find some form of suitable (eg not gym-based, not entirely solitary, not guilt inducing, unlikely to kill me) exercise while I am still perambulate and Walking Football has been on my agenda for a while, but I have never quite made the jump for two reasons: one, I have no-one to go with and two, the people who tell me they do play always seem so very old, but I think in principal that if I can just find a way to slow myself down, I might enjoy it. My wife – ever keen to get me out of the house – looked up the village team, found that the minimum age criterion is actually fifty five, and arranged a trial for me today. The football session is, I am told, an hour and a quarter, followed by a ‘social session’ at the local sports and social club. If I don’t like it, I will have lost a couple of hours of my life. If they don’t like me (more likely: I am something of an acquired taste) I hope I will be able to recognise it and withdraw. If I do like it, and they can put up with me, it will open me up to trying other things: give me confidence to go it alone now and again. Mind you, there is, on a different weekday, a group for less able and older players and my main aim today is not to get relegated before I start. I’m not sure how I would react to that.

Setting aside the sheer terror of meeting new people I am, of course, worried that I will not be good enough. It’s been a while since I’ve played football competitively. Will I still have any touch, will I still see a pass, am I likely to find myself in an ambulance sucking oxygen in through a mask after fifteen minutes? More to the point, as the new boy, will they stick me in goal? I have no idea what talents I may have left, but I am pretty certain that goalkeeping is not among them. I am fit, but I am also 66 and it’s been a while since I’ve done anything even remotely strenuous that takes over an hour. But then I remind myself it is walking football, how strenuous can it be? I walk all the time. My step count is the healthiest thing about me. Physically I know I should have no problem, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m quite ready for walking pace yet. My normal walking pace is more of a scuttle and I get frustrated by fit, young people who insist on walking so very slowly in front of me, particularly when I can’t find my way past them. I just know that I will forget myself and run when I shouldn’t. I know that I might be a little bit more ‘robust’ than is necessarily desirable, but I also know that I will do all I can to ‘fit in’, because that is what I do. If I’m honest, I’m keen to find out if I can do it.

There is, I must admit, a distinct possibility that I will not even go, or if I do, that I will slope away before anyone has noticed that I am there. As things stand I am very determined to join in, but when I get there, things could definitely change. If I am faced with a large group of people who are very familiar with one another, but not with me, I could easily buckle. Having no perceptible talent of my own, I have always been very much a team player, but I am aware that I often struggle to take that one, vital first step of joining the team in the first place. I can only hope that this time I can walk right into it…

The Thing with Feathers

I have just finished the twenty third rewrite of my book and I feel that it is now ready to go (which will remain the case until I commence the twenty fourth rehash) but I don’t have a publisher and, at my age, see very little prospect of getting one given the kind of drivel I tend to write. Now, I am at a stage in my life when everything about me comes bound with one very simple suffix: ‘for his age’: he’s very fit for his age, he’s quite strong for his age, he’s quite young for his age, he doesn’t smell too bad for his age etc etc, and the positive end of that equation is that I no longer give a flying wosname about things that used to really bother me, e.g. I’ve written a book that no-one outside of the family (who probably couldn’t give a chuff quite frankly, they – rightly – have bigger fish to fry) will ever read. It’s all ok. It’s really ok except…

I know that I have written about this before and I remember that at that time I mentioned that flushed with something as close to excitement as this old body ever encounters I had already started to write a follow up which will be destined to exactly the same fate. This post is, however, not a paean to the sad reality of lost hope, it is about the happy realisation that age provides a welcome super-power, an armour against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune: it means that I have ceased to give a shit! The person for whom such things mattered has long gone. His replacement continues to give everything his best shot, he has hope, he still gets frustrated when his best is not good enough, but he expects nothing from fate in return for his efforts. Kismet has its own games to play.

Does this knowledge make me a better person? I sincerely doubt it although, Lord knows, I realise that there is much room for improvement. I have many faults and I am on first name terms with most of them. It is my conviction that, whatever Pandora allowed herself to believe, it was not Hope that she eventually managed to keep confined within her box, it was Self-Knowledge: just as well if you ask me, because that is one king-sized can of worms. I try to imagine a world full of the self aware: it is a world in which all jokes are at one’s own expense, where all of the poets are Sylvia Plath, all of the songwriters are Leonard Cohen and all of the politicians are Donald Trump. (Most of us when confronted with our own frailties and flaws wonder how to remedy them – politicians wonder how to gain from them.)

And once again the Shield of Age comes to my rescue: I can see my faults very clearly, but I am aware that I am much too long in the tooth to do much about them. I addressed (I hope) most of the more objectionable of them decades ago. The mildly offensive traits have had their corners knocked off in the intervening years and I am left with only the gratingly annoying habits which we will all have to learn to live with.

Outside of the huge, sweeping (and mostly Russian) sagas that I tried (and failed) to read as a youth, most novels are framed within a fairly tight span of time. Characters are defined and, generally fixed, but life is not like that. Real people develop and adapt. Some behaviours may become deeply entrenched and unshakeable (these are the things that – unless they are illegal or deeply unsavoury – they will talk about in your eulogy) but for most of us, our persona is written and rewritten countless times through our allotted span. The person who dies is not the one who was born and hope, like energy, is never lost, it is just transformed. You never know, it could be a best seller. There is always hope…

Hope

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Every Day Is Like Wednesday

The more astute amongst you may have noticed that my main post this week dropped on Tuesday instead of my previous Wednesday slot and I wish to inform you that this does not herald a change in my ongoing publication schedule but merely offers evidential proof that since I retired, I don’t know what bloody day it is!

Lagging Behind

My immediate fate looms over me. It is in the attic.

When we bought this bungalow we were made aware that it had a very high energy efficiency rating, but the very first trip into the loft for a good old post-move rummage showed that all was not quite as it should be. The whole roof space is covered in floorboards that are absolutely fine as long as you don’t want to stand on them. When the loose ones are lifted it is immediately noticeable that something is missing. There is more insulation in a lace fedora. I have a number of theories: perhaps the inspector was scared of heights and couldn’t face the trip to the top of the loft ladder; or he wasn’t scared of heights at all, but the batteries were flat in his torch, or maybe somebody stole all the insulation between his inspection and the onset of our residence. Our old fully insulated house had a ‘D’ rating, whilst the bungalow is ‘B’ due, it would seem, to the presence of solar panels and a generally sunny disposition. Nonetheless, the general wadding deficiency is something I feel that I must address before winter closes in. The plan is relatively straightforward: remove old and sagging floorboards; add a new section of raised floorboards with insulation underneath and top up insulation elsewhere. So simple. Let me talk you through it…

…Entrance to the loft is through a hatch and a ladder that has insufficient space to fully lock into place. The space is tight, the climb is steep and involves removing a section of my scalp on the latch every single flippin’ time I go up. Once I manoeuvre my head through the gap it is simple to lever the rest of me through, opening a wound the size of the Mariana Trench along my spine on the self-same latch. I fear that after the few hundred ascents that completion of the work will require, I will not be able to get out of a chair without hoists. Not necessarily a bad thing, because walking is the last thing I want to be doing up there. No sane person would wander about between our eaves without a head-to-toe rubber suit and a fully comprehensive insurance policy.

I am actually lurching, Quasimodo-like, from rafter to rafter, acutely aware that the entire space is full of electrical cables and unidentified copper pipes. One mis-step and I will be one floor down amongst plasterboard shards, naked electrical cables and water. In the odd place where the floorboards actually touch the rafters, they are nailed in place because whoever fitted them found a screwdriver too difficult to operate. Removal is tortuous. Each board takes about half an hour to lift and then must be brought down the ladder with a clearance of about 1mm to each side providing I plane the surface from my knuckles – which I do repeatedly – and is followed by the almost ritual shucking of scalp on the way back up.

After the old floorboards are lifted glass-fibre insulation matting must be laid and so my wife has bought me a head to toe ‘forensic’ boiler suit to work in, gloves and a mask. Outside it is about 20 degrees (centigrade) in the suit it is about 50. I am slowly being rendered. I have divested myself of all clothing underneath bar a T shirt and pants (boxers) which are plastered to me like a supermodel’s see-through ensemble when demurely attempting to avoid publicity at a billionaire’s swim party. I am not a pretty sight.

After the new insulation has gone down – if I can get across the old stuff without crashing through the ceiling – I am going to raise a new section of floorboards on recently purchased stilts, which appear both fragile and frankly, frighteningly bendy. They also each have four screw slots to fit them to the joists but the bases are wider than the beams – despite being the stated size – and the screws have to go in at an angle that means that the electric screwdriver will not quite fit in, but believe me, with 200 screws to put in, I will find a way. My wrist will barely support a full glass of single malt these days, let alone drive in that number of fittings. If I can’t make it work it will be back to superglue.

Twelve hours of solid toil during which I have drunk gallons of water, only to discover that the toilet arrangements sewn into disposable boiler suits are sadly inadequate, sees me half way to being done: what has had to come up and go down has done both; what has to go up before going down will have to wait until tomorrow…

Tomorrow.

I started off the day by prising myself into the still damp and sticky disposable boiler suit because my wife – in spite of all my pleading – wouldn’t let me dispose of it in advance of completion of works. I donned mask, gloves and head torch (the attic does have electric lights which somehow appear to make it darker) and, with a song in my heart, launched into the day’s labours. Dare I say it went reasonably well. I fought the stilts into place, laid down 80 square metres of insulation which, despite the ‘all-surfaces body covering’ offered by my workwear, has left me itching and covered in the kind of rash that normally accompanies dropping a tenner in a nettle patch, and screwed the floorboards – which, amazingly, appear to be relatively solid – to the stilts. I have walked across them with little fear – although I certainly wouldn’t risk tap-dancing on them. We will store suitcases up there and the empty boxes that we keep in case we can ever think of anything to put in them. Anyone even faintly familiar with roof spaces will know that despite the original bungalow being a ten by eight metre oblong, I was not able to lay any more than two feet per roll without cutting around roof trusses, various pipes, TV aerials, long abandoned electrical works and disconnected water tanks, but I got there in time. I even managed to fit some ventilation widgets without destroying the roof. I am a happy man and ready for the winter. Bring it on. I am fully up to British Standard – until the government changes it, at which point I will tell my wife not to bother buying me another bloody boiler suit. Buy us both a nice thick cardigan to keep us warm instead, because I’m not going up there again!

Where Have All the Builders Gone?

…And then you wake up one morning to find that all the builders have gone leaving you alone with nothing but a plastered shell and a ton of rubble. That is the scene I now survey over my brimming skip and several small shop’s-worth of sundry building and decorating supplies. The ‘men’ have finished, but I have barely started to address the jobs on my own list. Things seem very different but in reality, of course, it is only the timetable that has changed. No more 7am scrambles to move the car, open the garage, open the gate, open the doors, brew the coffee and open the biscuits before ‘the men’ arrive. No more ‘You need to do this tonight, because they will need to do that tomorrow’. I must come to terms with the brief few hours I have to spare now that things no longer need to be done yesterday and ponder the magnitude of what lies ahead. I suddenly realise – and forgive me for a moment whilst I put my pompous hat on – that I am merely at the End of the Beginning as far as the house is concerned. (Although, sadly, as far as Lifespan is concerned, The Beginning of the End is already tucked away in the past alongside multi-coloured tank-tops, Camp Coffee and curry made from tinned Irish Stew.) My Jobs To Do list stretches off into the future like the Alien Love Diary of Captain James T Kirk. The trick, I think, will be to beat it into some kind of shape. The timetable will be assembled like an ethereal flat-pack e.g. it will be wonky and will almost definitely not stand up to scrutiny. Renewing the floor in the attic and increasing the insulation must be completed before winter if I do not want to be flooded with condensation each time I open the loft-hatch. Re-roofing The Hobbit House must also be done before winter if I do not want to throw everything that is currently in it, out of it in spring. Relaying patio and paths around house must certainly be finished before winter if I do not want to wind-up in A&E with the first stumble on wonky, frost covered slabs. Fitting in a holiday must be done if I don’t want to end the year in a grave. (The photograph at the top of this post is of our Hobbit House. The roof issues are self-explanatory, yet somehow it remains watertight – much to the relief of the mice. Somewhat more difficult to understand is the condition of the weather vane which, having suffered a bird strike – the cockerel’s tail will attest to that – appears somehow to have reversed the Earth’s rotation. East, it would appear has, along with the rest of the world, gone west.)

We also need, I am told, an amount of new furniture that would probably see Elton John blanching, and a number of electrical gew-gaws for the kitchen to replace the ones which are no longer the right colour. Somewhere, I sense, the person in charge of my Pension Fund is teetering on the edge of a very tall building…

Everyone we have spoken to since we first decided to begin the slow process of cashing in our pension chips has told us “Spend it while you’re still young enough to enjoy it. Don’t worry about the kids: they’ve got plenty and anyway, they’ll get the house when you go.” Whilst I dreamt of long, sultry holidays, my wife dreamed of sofas. Our car, which starts each morning out of sheer bloody-mindedness, is probably looking forward to putting its feet up more than I am. Eventually we will need to chip even further into our contingency funds or start to roller-skate. I quite enjoy roller-skating, but fear that my youthful ability to bounce back after a fall may well have been usurped by a tendency to break. When it comes to facing hospital food, age is definitely against me.

The Government, however (whom I am certain are shorn of all ulterior motives) continue to warn us that we must save for a rainy day. We might need expensive dental work (as if there is any other kind), cancer treatment that the Health Service cannot afford, or feel the need (possibly insisted upon by law) to bail the government out by selling the house and buying a tent. I fear that I might one day find myself with that nice Mr Damacles’ sword no longer hovering above me, but buried deep into my cranium.

For now, at least, I am faced with no such dilemmas: they lie in the future. I paint where and when I am instructed whilst enhancing my mental agility in order to face the mountain of Easy Construction Guides that await me, knowing that at some stage my wife will want to know how I have managed to produce a wonky wardrobe from a box clearly labelled ‘Single Bed’… and why I have hidden the mattress behind the shed. I will, no doubt, have to return to the shop and buy a wardrobe in the hope that the mattress will fit it.

Or perhaps I should just get the builders back in…