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

A Sudden Realisation

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

You see, it has only just occurred to me. As I fast approach retirement I was looking back over my last three years of part time employment and I remembered…

…On 4th January 2021 the UK government announced our third national Covid Lockdown in a year. All non-essential shops were to be closed from 6^th of January and the shop I had spent over thirty years of my life working in would not open again. My boss opted for full retirement, while I didn’t really want to simply stop, so agreed to work two days a week for a friend as soon as shops were allowed to re-open. This final Lockdown lasted until mid-July with inter-household mixing banned, football matches played in empty stadiums, night clubs, theatres and music concerts also closed – again. It was a bleak bleak time – the third in little more than a year: many grandparents missed all contact with new-born grandchildren whilst many new-born grandchildren missed the opportunity to see their grandparents – ever.

For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with The Lockdown, it basically involved going nowhere and meeting no-one – including family – for months on end. Initially, we were not allowed even to exercise outside. People died alone and scared; people went mad with loneliness; the world started to fall apart. As ‘outside’ restrictions on exercise eased, the daily walk became a salvation for millions. Greetings were waved across the street – nobody (with the exception of certain politicians) got any closer than that – but at least you began to realise that you were not the last survivors on earth. Despite being the world’s worst pre-Covid runner, I was kept sane by running (or what, to the outside world, might well have appeared to be a protracted drunken stumble) right through the majority of Covid and blogging about it regularly, along with all the other vagaries of lockdown life. I suppose it is the ability of human beings to laugh during crises that enables us to survive. Looking back, there seems so little to laugh about but, at the time, my blogs were definitely wilfully aimed at being funny – maybe it was some kind of delirium. Perhaps we were all going stir-crazy.

Trying to put it all into some perspective now, I think that like everybody else I have probably blanked out great portions of those 18 months of turmoil. I remember the fear of the early days – sterilising all our food, everything tasting vaguely of bleach, avoiding all human contact like the… well, like the plague – but I also remember the weekly full-family Zoom get-togethers and how much I looked forward to them. Otherwise it was mostly reading and binge-watching TV series I think. Whisky and sanitized chocolate…

In April 2021, just over a year from the first restrictions, in the middle of the third and, for everyone growing evermore weary of the whole thing, the most exhausting lockdown, it was announced that whilst many constraints were to remain in place for months to come, non-essential shops would be allowed to re-open with strict mask-wearing and social distancing protocols in place and I embarked on a life of semi-retirement. It seems a weird thing to have been excited by now, but it was a life saver. Three years! It seems so long ago. It seems so recent.

Anyway, this has all just occurred to me because, as I approach full-on retirement, I was thinking about how very much I have enjoyed my last three years in a semi-employed state and especially the people I have spent them with. If you are one of them and you accidentally read this, then you’ll know. If you don’t, I’ll tell you soon enough. Thank you.

And coming next here? Well, I love the blog, so probably more of the same I’m afraid. I’ll get my apologies in early…

Changes

My wife, although younger, will retire before me. It makes sense for her to settle into her new routine before I have to settle into it too. I have plans, of course, for my own retirement: I want to write more; I want to paint something that is not a wall; I want to get out and about to see the world around me. I think that my wife would like to see me hone my DIY skills, whilst I would like to see me honing my paying somebody else to do it skills.

However old you are, forever feels like a very long time indeed and looking forward into an uncertain future is daunting. Until now work has always provided some structure to life:

Work days – get up, go to work, come home, go to bed
Days off – get up, do all the jobs I couldn’t do before because I was at work, go to bed

but what lies ahead is potentially routine-less and uncertain. Some things will not change – chores have to be done; DIY has to be attempted; phone calls have to be made to people who can put it all right again – but although, in the main, I have been working only two days a week of late, I worry how I will fill those soon-to-be vacant hours. I really don’t want it to be just two more days to fill with what I have always done. I need some new doors to open (preferably ones that I haven’t hung myself). I’m looking forward to doing more of the things that I like, but the question is, will I get away with doing less of the things I don’t?

In fact, what I am doing today is the thing that I love most (writing) squeezed into the gaps between the chores – being ‘of an age’ I can’t possibly charge through the entire day without taking regular breaks for tea and cake – so if I’m a little disjointed, I apologise. (N.B. If you had actually noticed that I am disjointed, I can only suggest that you get out more.) Taking a short break (sometimes of several days) in the midst of a designated task, begins to feel completely normal (as does involuntary groaning, unconscious moaning and – for any male with grandchildren – an unexplained infatuation with Ms. Appleberry from Cocomelon). This is how life changes.

For most of us the changes are slow and creeping, like a glacier moving downhill with barely perceptible but none-the-less inexorable progress: like the inevitable collapse of morals amongst those who, however idealistic at journey’s dawn, search for power and – in the worst instances – find it. There can be no greater irony than that the quest for absolute power is almost always pursued in the name of democracy: that so much hate is invoked in the name of God. Picture a zombie hoard engaged in a merciless rampage in the name of koalas: wars fought in the name of peace.

What we all strive to achieve is change for the better. Whatever the individual specifics, we all just want to be somehow better. To be more open, more friendly, more generous, more smiley, thinner, fitter, healthier… more Ms. Appleberry. I want to be all of those things. Life is all about change. As we get older, the changes become less voluntary and more inevitable. Whatever a person’s beliefs, no-one wants to face the grave with a bad conscience. The very worst of men – and let’s be honest, most of history’s really bad apples have been male – strive to repent before they take their last breath: “What’s that, Mr Hitler? You’re sorry? Oh, that’s alright then, all forgiven…” Ultimately, despite the many challenges I face in my convictions, I still believe in the goodness of the human spirit. The proof has to be in the fact that, despite living in a world that the media tells us is almost exclusively bad, the human race remains, in most part, a single, peace-seeking entity. Put most people – whatever their politics or creed – together in a room with a common goal and individual gifts and they will work together for the ultimate good. (Providing, of course, that there are no board games available.)

If I could have played a part, in however small a way, in making this a somehow better world, I would die a happy man (although, let’s be honest, I would always prefer the staying alive a happy man option). The world is currently a million miles away from being anywhere close to that, but at least it gives me something to do in my retirement…

N.B. This piece was written using all four colours of the very fine pen in the photograph – a generous gift from Mr & Mrs Underfelt. I hope for nothing but the best of days for you both.

…So the days float through my eyes
But the days still seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through… Changes – David Bowie

Another One Bites the Dust

So, another birthday has been and gone. 64 lies behind me, 65 with all its myriad possibilities lies ahead: literally limitless possibilities, but very few probabilities and even fewer likelihoods. If only I could see what might lay ahead for me (apart from the inevitable) I could make plans and devise excuses. If only I could, like my wife who knows exactly what I am going to say and how wrong it will be, see into the future. But no-one (other than partners) can do that can they? Well, here’s the thing…

I have lost count of the number of times when I have had an idea on which I have built a post only to find that, in the space between writing and publishing, somebody else has had exactly the same idea and published before me. I cannot tell you the number of times I have thought “Oh, that would be a great present for (whomever) they’ll be so surprised” only to find that they ask me for that self-same thing just hours after I’ve ordered it. So many times I have watched a new sitcom and thought “Hang on, I wrote and submitted that dialogue years ago. That joke was mine: I could easily find it in my files…” but I never do. What would be the point? There is no copyright on a joke – and anyway, who’s to say that somebody else didn’t make it first? As a writer you always attempt to make dialogue sound as natural as possible – I keep reams of notes of snatches from overheard conversations – maybe the dialogue wasn’t even mine in the first place.

I don’t so much see the future as live it. Somehow I manage to do things before anybody else even decides that they need doing, but in such a way that it looks as though I am simply responding to their demands. When I think of doing something, the consequence is that other people then start to think that they would like me to do it. It’s a good job that I am not a hunter; I would never be able to take anything unawares. I do not read minds, but my own mind is not only open for reading, it seems to be broadcasting across all bands. If I want to surprise someone I have to ensure that I don’t even think about surprising them.

Surely seeing the future would be the superpower to beat them all. Knowing that someone was going to take extreme offence to what you have to say would be certain to make you stop and think about it, wouldn’t it? Well, no, it wouldn’t, it would just allow you to duck early.

In reality seeing the future would only be bad news. Responding to what you know is going to happen before it happens could easily be misconstrued. Defensive actions taken in advance of offensive ones can only, themselves, be viewed as offensive by those who have no knowledge of the future. Nailing Judas’s ears to the table might seem justified in hindsight, but could very well have seemed a mite harsh at the time. Such a reaction to someone who had simply forgotten where he had been and where the money had come from may well have been considered a little over the top back then.

In short, foreknowledge is almost certain to come to no good unless we all have it, in which case, well… it isn’t really foreknowledge anymore, is it? It is just knowledge, and the knowledge that I will be 66 next year is nothing really to write home about…

Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, another one gone
Another one bites the dust.
Hey, I’m gonna get you too,
Another one bites the dust. Queen – Another One Bites the Dust (Deacon)

New Year’s Day

It’s a bit of a ‘taking stock’ day isn’t it: what am I/where am I/what/where would I like to be? The latter is always an unaccomplished aspiration, the former a messy truth. I plan to retire from work this year, other than for a few, irregular ‘helping out’ days, so I will have seven days a week to designate. Or have designated. I think that particular task will probably not be entirely my own, and I feel that my wife is already feeling the weight of responsibility, but I cannot really consider the year ahead because I have absolutely no idea what it is likely to bring.

I have never been much of a New Year’s Resolution person: I’ve never felt that the old me was that bad (‘useless’ I will accept, but not bad… exactly) and I really don’t feel qualified to put right whatever is wrong with me. That truly is a job for the professionals. Like everyone else I will vow to be thinner, healthier, better… but in the end I will just bob along, as I have always done, more or less the same tomorrow as I was yesterday.

Tomorrow I will pop my head over the parapet of 65 years of age which would, until recently have been a huge day, but then the government moved the goalposts. I will be at work tomorrow. My official retirement date has been moved back one full year, to my 66^th birthday. I will get my bus pass* a year from now – unless, of course, the government decides in the meantime that it is unfair of the elderly to occupy seats that could far more productively be used by young people who cannot afford cars because our generation has consumed all the world’s money whilst doing nothing at all for them! And they can’t walk, it’s so tiring. We own our house and lived in what would now be regarded as abject poverty** to get it. I have contributed my taxes for fifty years plus and the fact that I have been able to do that demonstrates, apparently, that I shouldn’t be able to gain any benefit from it now. Do I sound bitter? OK, I resolve to stop that right now.

As far as this blog is concerned I am realistic. I have no plan, no idea and little talent: this is never going to be great literature. The best I can hope is that it offers a modest insight into how it feels as the mind ages and the body collapses (or vice versa). Many years ago when I first started serving this salmagundi, one early reader commented that she thought I deserved praise for the way I was dealing with my dementia. To be honest, at that stage I was just pleased to find out that somebody was reading my little fol-de-rol, but I did nonetheless feel obliged to reply that, to the best of my knowledge, I was not suffering from the symptoms of early onset dementia (although, in retrospect, I’m not sure if I would have known) just facing the changes in perception marked by the passing of years. In short, I might be daft, but no more than ever I was – mentally it is how I start every New Year and, if I’m honest, all I really hope for is to end it in the same way…

*All pensioners in the UK get free bus travel – and therefore the opportunity to stand in the freezing cold waiting for a bus that never arrives, completely free of charge.

**No phone, no TV, cuts of meat that went out of fashion in the Mediaeval times and snowdrifts inside the lounge being particular highlights – all of which, incidentally, we realised we had brought on ourselves and were, therefore, nobody else’s problem.

“Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspapers says, says
Say it’s true, it’s true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one” New Year’s Day – U2. Written in the early eighties in the midst of the Irish Troubles, to express faint hope that things would one day be ok, and (sadly) applicable to half the world today…