Never Get Old

Of course, you need to do something after retirement don’t you?

Plan one was to make a list of all the things that needed doing around the house. It was great fun and I fully enjoyed it. I used a pen and some paper, walked around quite a lot and made notes. I think that my wrist probably got a week’s exercise there and then. Of course I knew that the paper could be recycled, so I was able to ‘file’ that afterwards, but I was less certain about the pen. Fortunately it didn’t run out so I was saved the decision, which was good…

Plan two was to tighten all the screws in the house. I knew from my list that I needed more than one screwdriver as I had seen screw heads of many different shapes, styles and sizes (sometimes all fixing the same shelf) and I was keen to ensure that all were catered for. Eventually I decided that in practice a single chisel would actually do the trick for them all, and subsequently I moved around the house in a logical fashion tightening every screw I came across. Whenever I encountered difficulty with a cross-head screw I was able – using the flat side of a spanner I had found – to hammer a slot head into it using the chisel which I then used to check for tightness. My trusty tube of superglue (always in my pocket, because that’s where it leaked, frankly) proved essential each time I attempted to tighten the screws holding plastic light switches. I have instructed my wife to always wear rubber-soled shoes when turning lights on.

A short rest took me through to Thursday afternoon the following week and plan three, when I decided to water the plants that are scattered about the house. First task was to differentiate between those that were green at the top and those that were brown at the top and furry at the bottom. I discovered that when I lifted the pots containing the latter variety, the top fell off at ground level. I presume that this might be some kind of evolutionary defence against cruising herbivores. Also, I now know where all the woodlice are coming from. Irrespective of type, I decided to water them all in the same manner e.g. by pouring water into the top of the pot until it poured out of the bottom and fused the electric sockets. Normally, of course, I would then have dried the power points with a hairdryer, but having no power I instead kept flicking the RCD until it stopped going bang. I decided against tightening the screws on the fuse box as I have no life insurance.

I am very aware that the key to a healthy retirement is exercise, so (plan four) I decided to do some sit-ups. I started by sitting up to watch three consecutive episodes of The Night Agent before, conscious that I might be over-doing it, I watched a further three laying down. At this time I also performed a large number of burpees – I’m sorry, burps, I mean burps. I regulated my hydration by drinking beer and wee-ing regularly, in the course of which I was often forced to walk several steps at a time.

Diet is, of course, an important factor in living a hale dotage. I understand that it is important, for instance, that you do not eat too much chocolate, but I also know that you can never eat too much chocolate. It is important to retain balance.

Furthermore, I recognise the importance of little steps to fitness and to that end I have refrained from changing the batteries in the TV remote which now needs quite a prolonged prodding before being effective. Similarly I have located a very blunt fork which greatly increases the effort required to puncture the film on a ready meal. I have moved the chair some two metres from the microwave. I eat with a smaller spoon.

All in all I feel that I can now look forward to a long and healthy retirement full of life-enriching pastimes, healthy food, brain and body exercise and companionship – as soon as I have house-trained the woodlice. I will not be standing still – unless I have a wall to lean on – but forging forward with the rest of my life in the knowledge that, although it is impossible to defeat ‘the fall’, it is possible to make a controlled descent. Ultimately, we all encounter the same end, so we might as well enjoy the journey and pad up for the landing…

(Better take care)
Think I better go, better get a room
Better take care of me
(Again and again)
I think about this and I think about personal history… Never Get Old – Bowie

Fat – A Slight Return

blue tape measuring on clear glass square weighing scale

Other than my blog, I have no ‘online’ presence at all – no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram – so, after I had written this post, I decided to email as many of my old school friends as I could and invite them to read along. Consequently, this post marked an early peak in readership, although it turned out to be very short lived. Some stayed with me for a little while, a few are still here (thank you) but most have wandered away realising that they have better things to do – oiling the cat, worming the lawnmower etc – and, as they moved on, my figures plummeted again before, some weeks later, beginning a frustratingly slow ascent. My readership remains very modest in number (although, individually, of the highest calibre) but as I set out, I had the loftiest of aspirations which, I now realise, will never be met…

Fat was first published 22 November 2018 and is approximately 1100 words long.

I have a bike. It is not a super-lightweight racing machine with slick tyres the thickness of knife-blades. It is a cheap, heavy mountain bike with tyres like a tractor. It has, of course, never been anywhere near a mountain. It has generally been pushed, not ridden, up the gentlest of inclines by its shagged-out rider. It has never, to my knowledge, borne a thin, lycra-clad athlete. It carries a fat man in jeans. The fat man is me and it is an immutable fact that whatever I may do, I am a fat man doing it. We are irrevocably conjoined by some weird symbiosis of thought, my weight and I: Colin/Fat, like Nelson Mandela/Hope, Usain Bolt/Fast, Idris Elba/James Bond, James Blunt/Turn That Bloody Racket Off! I know I should take more exercise. I know I should lose some weight. Every other expert on every other TV program tells me so. Every other expert on TV makes me feel bad about myself. I’ve got to be honest; the fact that the government tells me that I need to cut down on sugar, fat and alcohol is unlikely to sway me. This is the same government that tells me the health service is not in crisis, schools are better than ever before and that Brexit really does mean Brexit – whatever it is that Brexit means…

I have calculated my BMI – 25.6, which means that I am overweight. Now, I put most of this down to my height. If I was taller I wouldn’t be overweight. I have considered hanging from a doorway in order to decrease my BMI. Frighteningly, I appear to have actually shrunk by an inch over the last twenty years, although I prefer to think that my tape measure may have stretched. In fact, I still reach the same point on the garage wall – but I put that down to subsidence. I eat less than I once did and I exercise more, but I still put on weight. I don’t believe that any of this can be blamed upon a somnambulant thyroid (although, having said that, like an idiot I have just looked up the symptoms of an under-active thyroid, and I discover that I have them all). For the time being, until I can get an appointment at the doctor’s (I’m free in March if she is) I am perfectly happy to lay the blame at the door of Messrs. Cake, Gin and Chocolate. The answer is, I know, to exercise even more and eat even less. Perhaps if I exercise enough, I won’t have time to eat. Like most overweight people, I would like to lose a bit. Like most overweight people, I know that the only way to do so is to ‘do’ more and to consume less. Like most overweight people, I choose to do neither. I’m not obscenely fat, but I am of a build that allows me two choices when buying a ‘T’ shirt: something that resembles a Bedouin tent or something that looks like it has been spray-painted onto a lifebuoy. My weight dictates my behaviour: I dare not enter a swimming pool without first checking for Ahab.

You see, I have reached the age when I look at the obituaries and think, “My goodness, that’s no age,” when I used to think “Oh well, he/she had a good innings.” And I’m tired of hearing about people who were the “healthiest person I have ever met” just one day before they dropped down dead. I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn’t take up any new form of exercise once you’ve passed 50 years of age. Problem is, what do you do if your last real exercise was kiss-chase in the school playground? The real challenge when commencing a new exercise regime at my age is finishing it conscious. Like some of the medications I now take daily, one of the less desirable side-effects of exercise is death.

My mum couldn’t cook; she could burn water. Combining the correct quantities of cornflakes and milk in a bowl was, for her, a culinary triumph. But she loved a diet; the faffier and faddier the better. Meals that had to be meticulously weighed and prepared really appealed – but not for long. Unusual ingredients were always a bonus – particularly if she couldn’t find them anywhere. “I looked everywhere, but nobody had Patagonian cumquats, so I bought a pie.” I remember her doing a diet in which she ate nothing but grapefruit. Presumably you lose weight because the only thing you are allowed to eat is completely inedible. One of the true benefits of taking statins is that I no longer even have to contemplate a glass of grapefruit juice with my holiday breakfast. Scales were pounded weekly, daily, hourly and if there was no loss, exercise might be taken – normally a stroll around the block or, on Fridays, to the chip shop. For my mum, a diet began on a Monday and ended on a doughnut.

My own approach to dieting is equally haphazard: I try to eat less, I try to drink less and I try to eat only at meal times. And I eat fruit. Tons of fruit, which my largely fruitless upbringing led me to believe was good for me, but which the experts now tell me is too high in sugar. What happened to “an apple a day” and all that? I’m waiting for the for the catchy couscous or bulgar wheat epigrams, but they don’t appear to be forthcoming. No “do’s” only “don’ts”. Can you imagine your mum telling you forty years ago that drinking a litre of green slime a day would be good for you? The nearest we got to a ‘Supergreen Smoothie’ was a pot of mushy peas. And yet, as kids, we were all so skinny. The only child in our class who carried above average ‘timber’ was known as ‘fatty’ for the rest of his life. He was revered by all because he learned to sweat before the rest of us. I was like a walking X-Ray: a badly assembled jumble of skin and bone. I looked like somebody had tried to get me onto Ryan Air as hand luggage by turning me inside out and emptying me. My grandma, a Manchester woman who did not consider food to be of any value at all unless it “gave you a lining” had a mission in life to “put some meat” on me. Sadly she didn’t see it, but in the long term, she succeeded…

The Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Has Ris*…

blue tape measuring on clear glass square weighing scale

… and the diet starts today. It’s the time of the year to try to starve this sad lump of a body into some kind of shape (strange phrase that – it’s already in some kind of shape: an amorphous sort of blobby one). Now, I’m not the most sophisticated of dieters. There are no fancy recipes, no points to count: generally I reduce my alcohol consumption to feature weekends only (the weekend, I should point out, starts on Friday, obviously) and I eat less chocolate (probably less of a challenge for me than eating more chocolate – after all, there are only so many hours in a day) and… well, I have to be honest, that’s about it really.

I’ve never really understood calorie counting. If you’re that bored, you could try counting the spikes in the Artex to similar effect. I have a simple principle really: trousers are getting tight, either a) lose a bit of weight or b) buy some new trousers and I cannot tell you how much I hate clothes shopping. So, my waist being somewhat more malleable than my waistband, it is the obvious place to start.

I’m not hugely overweight (pounds rather than stones) – I would say rotund rather than obese – and I’m relatively fit: I walk a reasonable distance each day and I cycle during the summer (as I cannot function in the cold). I can get my arse out of the chair without becoming too breathless. I played football until I was well into my 50’s – hence the on-going battle to get my knees to bend in the morning – but I don’t take any kind of formal exercise; no gyms or classes or anything else where I am forced to look my porky age whilst others do not. Meeting new people leaves me rigid with fear. I have no idea what meeting a new group of people all dressed in lycra might do to me. And, whilst we’re here, I really do not like public swimming pools. I’m a very weak swimmer and, while I’m perfectly happy to bob around in the shallow end with the grandkids, I would look a bit weird without them.

Now, it was my intention to tell you my starting weight, but I can’t. The battery has gone in the bathroom scales so, unless I can find some means of perching on the kitchen scales, the diet will have to be postponed until I get a new one: what would be the point of losing weight without knowing it? It’s all about verification isn’t it? Tomorrow I will buy a new battery and I will weigh myself before I start to diet so that I am aware of every single gram that I lose. And, in a week or two, when my trousers have become too loose, I will be faced with another dilemma: buy new trousers or eat more chocolate. If you want my advice, buy shares in Cadbury now.

*The spring has sprung, the grass has ris
I wonder where the birdy is
Some people say the bird is on the wing
But that’s absurd, for I would say the wing is on the bird.
(My mum’s favourite springtime quotation)

Fat

fat

I have a bike. It is not a super-lightweight racing machine with slick tyres the thickness of knife-blades. It is a cheap, heavy mountain bike with tyres like a tractor. It has, of course, never been anywhere near a mountain. It has generally been pushed, not ridden, up the gentlest of inclines by its shagged-out rider. It has never, to my knowledge, borne a thin, lycra-clad athlete. It carries a fat man in jeans. The fat man is me and it is an immutable fact that whatever I may do, I am a fat man doing it. We are irrevocably conjoined by some weird symbiosis of thought, my weight and I: Colin McQueen/Fat, like Nelson Mandela/Hope, Usain Bolt/Fast, Idris Elba/James Bond, James Blunt/Turn That Bloody Racket Off! I know I should take more exercise. I know I should lose some weight. Every expert on every TV program tells me so. Every expert on TV makes me feel bad about myself. I’ve got to be honest; the fact that the government tells me that I need to cut down on sugar, fat and alcohol is unlikely to sway me. This is the same government that tells me the health service is not in crisis, schools are better than ever before and that Brexit really does mean Brexit – whatever it is that Brexit means…

I have calculated my BMI – 25.6, which means that I am overweight. Now, I put most of this down to my height. If I was taller I wouldn’t be overweight. I have considered hanging from a doorway in order to decrease my BMI. Frighteningly, I appear to have actually shrunk by an inch over the last twenty years, although I prefer to think that my tape measure may have stretched. In fact, I still reach the same point on the garage wall – but I put that down to subsidence. I eat less than I once did and I exercise more, but I still put on weight. I don’t believe that any of this can be blamed upon a somnambulant thyroid (although, having said that, like an idiot I have just looked up the symptoms of an under-active thyroid, and I discover that I have them all). For the time being, until I can get an appointment at the doctor’s (I’m free in March if she is) I am perfectly happy to lay the blame at the door of Messrs. Cake, Gin and Chocolate. The answer is, I know, to exercise even more and eat even less. Perhaps if I exercise enough, I won’t have time to eat. Like most overweight people, I would like to lose a bit. Like most overweight people, I know that the only way to do so is to ‘do’ more and to consume less. Like most overweight people, I choose to do neither. I’m not obscenely fat, but I am of a build that allows me two choices when buying a ‘T’ shirt: something that resembles a Bedouin tent or something that looks like it has been spray-painted onto a lifebuoy. My weight dictates my behaviour: I dare not enter a swimming pool without first checking for Ahab.

My own approach to dieting is equally haphazard: I try to eat less, I try to drink less and I try to eat only at meal times. And I eat fruit. Tons of fruit, which my largely fruitless upbringing led me to believe was good for me, but which the experts now tell me is too high in sugar. What happened to “an apple a day” and all that? I’m waiting for the for the catchy couscous or bulgar wheat epigrams, but they don’t appear to be forthcoming. No “do’s” only “don’ts”. Can you imagine your mum telling you forty years ago that drinking a litre of green slime a day would be good for you? The nearest we got to a ‘Supergreen Smoothie’ was a pot of mushy peas. And yet, as kids, we were all so skinny. The only child in our class who carried above average ‘timber’ was known as ‘fatty’ for the rest of his life. He was revered by all because he learned to sweat before the rest of us. I was like a walking X-Ray: a badly assembled jumble of skin and bone. I looked like somebody had tried to get me onto a Ryan Air flight as hand luggage by turning me inside out and emptying me. My grandma, a Manchester woman who did not consider food to be of any value at all unless it “gave you a lining” had a mission in life to “put some meat” on me. Sadly she didn’t see it, but in the long term, she succeeded…