I was reminded of a pithy lyric during my vinyl breakfast the other morning, sitting on the back balcony at the beginning of a glorious day (before the storms forecast for the next day), watching two hot-air balloons glide side by side over the landscape ('Watch out for that hill!' 'What was that? Can't hear you; the gas burner!' 'I said watch out for...!'). I don't think my significant others, wife and daughter would be any too pleased to know that I refer to it as my vinyl breakfast as opposed to, say, my family breakfast, but it's the one time in the day that I allow myself the stop-go luxury of playing records, as opposed to the less distracting requirements of the compact disc.
Anyway, it comes from Little Feat's live album, Waiting For Columbus, which I haven't played for quite some time. I wouldn't tend to play it in polite company, grubby Southern blues-rock being far too raucous for the tender matutinal ears of wife and daughter. The Good Wife had gone to Brive for a day of toil, while The Daughter was lingering in bed. I can't remember off-hand which song it comes from, but the gist of the lyric is 'You know when you're over the hill/If your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill.' Yes, I know it should really be 'fulfil', but Little Feat are American, so you have to forgive them their lexical transgressions. When it comes to the sanctity of the English language, Americans know not what they do. Besides, it wouldn't scan.
The sentiment seemed apt. I was sitting there nursing the last of my morning coffee in cupped hands, staring at the grass round the back of the house. As high as an elephant's eye once more. The private, unacceptable face of domesticity. Amazing what a bit of sunshine after the rain can do. I reckoned that if I really applied myself with my trusty Honda strimmer, I could tame that wilderness in half a day. But then I stopped to think. In the heat, even an hour at the helm of the strimmer leaves me a sweating, breathless wreck. It's work for a younger man now. Realistically, the best I could do would be to tackle it in several stages. Even then, I would be hobbling for several days after. When does this physical entropy start to set in? 63? Earlier? Maybe even in your 40s. Science hasn't answered the question satisfactorily. All I know is that it creeps up on you. One minute you can; the next minute you can't.
Soon after my vinyl breakfast, before the sun was too strong, would have been an ideal time for the initial stage, but there was a dog to walk, after which my brother phoned on What'sUp, as he calls it. He phoned me from bed, suffering the excruciating pain of gout in his toes. Our father who are't perhaps in heaven used to suffer periodically from gout. The Brother got the old fella's genes (and taste for alcohol), while I got our wiry, anxious mother's. We come from the same gene-pool, but physically we're like a butternut squash and a courgette. At least he's never become a pumpkin, for which he's probably got his work as a plumber to thank. He hoped to resume activities in a few days, but the prognosis didn't seem good.
We spoke of things corporal - a joint these days is not what it used to be – and horticultural. I told him about our terrible soil here, in which only grass, weeds, roses, lavender and sumac grow with any certainty. He knows even less about gardening than I do, but he suggested turning it over to cacti and tumble weed, which made a lot of sense to a reluctant gardener like me.
He knows a lot more about plumbing, being a man of the cloth cap and the pipe-bender. He's hoping to install a new bathroom in their flat. Whereupon, he can move the 'master bedroom' back upstairs, where nature intended it and where he can suffer future bouts of gout, enabling him then to tackle downstairs. It's only taken a little more than four decades to refurbish the place. The kitchen sink still drains into an old plastic rubbish bin christened The Ganges. When he's installed the kitchen, he intends to turn that old bin into a shrine and baptise himself in its murky, miasmic waters.
Before that momentous day, he plans to connect the posh new combi-boiler he installed five years ago to a network of radiators. So he and his long-suffering partner can have heating over winter at last. Only 40 years. Not bad for a plumber. It certainly puts my own recalcitrance into perspective. Particularly as he's the one with a gamut of practical skills that certainly didn't come from our gene pool. I can at least plead incompetence.
We talked, too, of mutual visits. He recognises that he has been somewhat dilatory in that respect. The last time he came here was for my 50th birthday party a mere 20 years ago. I should really strike up a deal with him: I'll come and visit the new second home in Finland when and only when he comes here. (His partner used to live Finland, which probably inured her to the cold.)
I would dearly love to visit him deep in the wooded Finnish countryside. Even or maybe especially in winter, as the house is well insulated and came with an efficient wood-burner. We could have a gay old time, drifting in a rowing boat on the nearby lake, or cracking jokes in the sauna (pronounced 'sowna', his partner snaps). The Brother on his day can be one of the funniest people on the planet. The next day, I brought to his attention on What'sUp that André Rieu's Maastricht by Moonlight was showing later on Sky Arts. I suggested it could be a tonic for his toes. Quick as a quip, he replied that it was the only thing likely to get them moving again, that it could be 'a Rieu awakening'. Well, it made me laugh.
The trouble is, my increasing dislike, even fear, of travelling has increased in inverse ratio to my decreasing physical powers. I don't know if this is a common symptom of advancing age. If so, the Good Wife has not been afflicted – although I have a few years on her yet. She still dreams of visiting distant places, which must make me a source of frustration to her.
So are my failing physical powers linked to my increasing discomfort with the prospect of travel? I'm not aware of any qualms about walking distances with heavy cases; it's more a psychological thing. The other day, my friend David of Nazareth, who's got a few months on me in our preparations for that 'certain age', sent me this cartoon by Robert Crumb. It's probably as simple as that: we are both less and less inclined to leave our respective houses these days. I'm too darn comfortable to bother with the serious upheaval of travel.
For the moment, touch wood, I'm not wracked by ague or gout. I don't yet need a Judy, like the Dickens character, to shake up me bones. But I suppose I ought to sign up for another overhaul in Cahors. I went about seven or eight years ago and they checked out my vision, my hearing, my prostate and such like. But the older you get, the less likely you are to emerge with a clean bill of health. Being an inveterate coward, I prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, health-wise. Perhaps not the wisest policy, but it's got me this far in one piece.
I take my cue from someone like Charles in the village down the road. He's in his mid 80s and seemingly as skinny and as lithe as a Kenyan marathon runner. He still tackles all the odd jobs that need doing around his property himself. The other day I passed by with Daphne on our morning constitutional and he was standing on a wall, cleaning out a gutter I think. I doffed my hat, figuratively speaking, to his exemplary self-reliance. He explained that it helped him to stay agile – although he now climbs gingerly down from a wall rather than jumping down. This seemed like a good gauge for the future. I'm still able to jump down from a wall of modest height; I'll know that I'm well and truly over the hill and unable to deliver on my mental promises when I have to climb gingerly down.
The women folk have both gone to England now, leaving me to my own devices. The weather is due to be poor, which means that I'll have an excuse to leave the garden to grow in peace. I'll get back to some of my sedentary tasks, which have no doubt ruined my vision but spared my body. Twice each day, I'll pull on my jogging, lace up my baskets and head off with the dog for a bit of footing around the neighbourhood. Actually, I won't: le footing – or jogging as any sensible race would call it – has never been my style. I value my knees too much. What's wrong with a brisk walk? Or a spin on the bike? Talking of which... Daphne!!! Walkies...
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