Age, and Fearfulness

I’m getting older.

I know, it’s shocking – and I’ve done my best to avoid facing up to it. I mean, physically I don’t look or feel that much different to how I did fifteen years ago (apart from a few grey hairs, and being more aware of the limitations of the parts of myself damaged in incidents long ago*) but I can feel myself relentlessly becoming more cautious, more fearful. I don’t like having less than a quarter tank of heating oil. I drive like your grandmother. And worst of all at some point in the last decade, without even noticing it, I started listening to Radio 4.

This post comes to you written offline on a train, courtesy of Windows Live Writer which, despite myself, I quite like. But since I got on I must have checked my itinerary three times. Have I left myself enough time to get where I’m going?*** Have I got what I need with me? Have I even got the right day? I can’t help but think that for the first time, I really don’t have a mental handle on what’s going on. I’m blaming it on age.

Actually, no. Having thought about it, I’m going to blame it on stupidity, lack of sleep, and Keats; the summer harvests have started, turning my evenings into a blur of picking, washing, drying, freezing, jam making et al. I tend to finish around 10pm, at which time the smart money would be on having a hot drink and hitting the hay – but not me, oh no. At that point I decide that I will feel cheated if I don’t have any me time, so instead I watch TV or play some dumbass game on the Wii until it’s far too late. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, but I’m afraid it’s me – at least for the moment.

 

*To whit; a couple of broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken nose, torn ligaments at the back of my right knee**, and damage to my pride. The last one, dear readers, still smarts from time to time.

**Don’t ask. Suffice it to say that the memory still makes me snigger.

***I should mention that I was brought up in a household where cleanliness wasn’t next to godliness; punctuality was. And by punctuality, I mean arriving at least an hour before. With sandwiches. Some of the longest hours of my life were spent in departure lounges and movie theatres, eating  sausage rolls while bemused staff unlocked doors and turned lights on, getting ready for when the rest of the punters arrived forty minutes later.

Unfortunately my instinctive reaction to this, as an adult, has been to leave everything to the last moment. The tannoy announcements you hear at the airport, repeated every few minutes with increasing desperation? They’re looking for me. And I’m in a shop somewhere, reading a newspaper that I haven’t paid for, oblivious to the time. I’m not proud of it, but hey – everyone should have a personality quirk. Me, I collect them.