Any year that ends with the number ‘4’ is a deeply significant one for me. A lot of hoo-ha attaches itself to the accompanying birthday, then a few years down the line you wonder what all the fuss was about. In ’74, I was a student deluded by self-importance. In ’84, I thought I had matured into manhood, only to discover that I still didn’t know doodly-squat. In ’94, I believed I was on the threshold of a sensible middle-age, but moved to France the very next year to begin my life over again. In ’04, I embraced middle age. In ’14, I felt that 60 was the portal to old age, only to learn that there were a few good years still left in me.
This time, however, there’s no kidding. Seventy is o-l-d, old. I have definitely stepped over the threshold into what will prove to be either the penultimate or the final act: I wake up every morning, despite my new indecently expensive pillow, to find that my body hasn’t regenerated itself overnight, but merely aches anew. My neck, my shoulders, my lower back… Entropy has well and truly set in. Everything is winding down and slowly but surely disintegrating. Friends urge me to go in for an M.O.T. and I will take advantage of the departmental medical board’s kind offer of a free overhaul, promise, but there are so many body-parts to go wrong at this age that it’s a journey into fear…
Like the Caisse Primaire Assurance Médicale, or whatever it might have changed its name to in recent times, I try to act preventively and responsibly. First thing now, before feeding the animals and turning on the wi-fi (for heaven’s sake), for example, I try to remember to hang for a minute or so from underneath the stairs to the mezzanine level to prevent my bones from fusing. It’s the self-help alternative to Smallweed’s periodic command to his long-suffering wife in Dickens’ Bleak House, ‘shake me up, Judy.’
For the last few years, I have been approaching the stage of life where one does a lot of mental arithmetic. Everything these days seems to involve a subtraction from a hundred – the absolute maximum life expectancy – to calculate how many years are potentially left, supposing that you survive illness, disease, accident or rising summer temperatures. If I make it as far as ’44, will I still have the will to push on for a century? My lifelong passion for cricket has taught me that this is the right thing to do, but what if I’ve been consigned by then to an old people’s home? There are only so many communal singalongs that a person can tolerate.
Yes, the will to live. It’s a stage in your life where those you have known, whether personally or by repute, have given up and/or are dropping like flies. A dear friend from my days as a deluded self-important student at Exeter University recently passed on the news that a mutual friend of ours had topped himself. Apparently, he’d had problems with the demon drink and had lost the resolution to keep going. I was very saddened by the news. True, I hadn’t seen him in decades, but he was the first fellow student I met when my father delivered me and my youthful impedimenta to my hall of residence. He had smiled warmly and spoken with the air of a well-seasoned public-schoolboy. Always unfailingly courteous and charming, there was nevertheless something slightly nervous about him. On hearing the news of his premature demise, I immediately wondered whether he’d suffered some kind of abuse at public school that he had never confronted. Perhaps drink was his way of trying to blot it out. And when that doesn’t work…
But enough of such sad news, already. There’s quite enough of that kind of thing in the daily headlines. Since we’re on the topic of maturity, let me update you on recent developments around this house, which reached the age of 20 this summer. The walls of straw seem to be holding up nicely, despite the recent coloured lime-wash that rapidly turned as white as chalk, and the unmanageable garden is maturing nicely. This coming winter, we will no longer have to squelch over muddy grass to the front door, because Damien (our putative family retainer) finally turned up only two years after his original estimate to lay a long and winding path to the porch. Until the newly scattered grass seeds carpet the exposed soil between the limestone pavers, the path will be known as ‘the giraffe’. Passing friends and callers have admired it and I wish that I could have informed them that it was all my own handiwork. If I’d done it myself, I know only too well, it would have looked more like a brontosaurus than a giraffe.
I have to say, it was well worth the outlay. I often pop out onto the porch to admire it and, secretly, I have re-discovered the childish joy of trying to get from A to B without stepping on the lines. I have even attempted a return journey to the end of the line in slippers, just to prove to myself that I can do it without them getting wet or muddy. The march of civilisation goes on apace.
With the imminent arrival of sister and brother-in-law for my birthday, I mowed our lawn of weeds either side of the new giraffe – just to accentuate the new, clean look and to complement the pansies that the Good Wife has planted in pots in honour of the visit. My brother-in-law keeps their garden as immaculate as my sister keeps their house and, although we live very differently and believe that ‘when in Rome…’, you feel obliged to pull out all or at least some of the stops.
There’s little I can do about the lawn of weeds, however. While wielding my little Lidl electric mower, I was thinking of ways I could market it. Watching the adverts in between the marvellous screwball comedy The More The Merrier on Talking Pictures the other evening, it seems that you can sell anything if you’re artless enough. You, too, could have a lawn like ours. Just sow the seeds and scatter and watch those multifarious weeds take over. Simply send a cheque for £75 made out to Grassmyarse Ltd. Money back within 15 days if not delighted… I don’t think so. Never mind, it looks lawn-like for a moment.
It’s the garden that may well prove to be the death of me – to use my mother’s hyperbole. If anything other than osteoporosis or senile dementia drives us out of our house and into an easy-to-run flat, it’ll be the garden. Never knowingly horticultural, my failing body will make it even harder to maintain order in the years to come. We joke about a family retainer, and nothing could be finer in the state of Carolina, but we know that the financial family planning makes it a pipe dream. We’ve discussed the idea of offering board and lodging to a young WOOF-equivalent, but do we really want to share our house with a stranger? We did that for seven years when we lived in Sheffield and it wasn’t always easy. Once or twice it nearly ended in bloodshed. Mind you, the most trying offender was… French.
So then… What next? What does the future hold in store for an aged man and his ageing wife? Bobby, I don’t know…, as James Brown told his Famous Flame, but whatever it is, it’s got to be funky. I’m hoping that the regular yoga, dog-walks and stair-hangings will keep me reasonably limber for a little longer yet. I still believe I could dance all night (if they only let me), and until the day when I’m confronted by tangible evidence that indeed I cannot, perhaps it’s best just to carry on in the belief that you can and see how far that gets you.
Hmmmm. Perhaps I’ll turn to philosophy in my old age. That’s something you can do in bed, isn’t it?
