Whatever will be will be...

Thursday this week I hit 60.  Really?  Already?  Here I am, a man fully aware of his mortality, not yet quite fretting about it but quickly sliding down an ultra slippy greasy pole of a thing / on a hyper-fast downhill bike race towards some unwanted finishing line.  Jeez!  Where the feck have the brakes gone?

There must be some benefits of getting to this age?  If I was a big girl in the 1940's then I'd have reached state pension age and probably lived just a few years more.  Life was grim back then.  

Interestingly if I were living in London today I'd qualify for a bus and tube pass.  Not up north though.  I thought everyone got one at 60 but no, somewhere along the line it changed to state pension age 'cept for the lucky buggers in the big smoke, the Welsh and the Scottish.  However, that is NOT enough of an incentive to move home.  However, I will qualify for free eye checks and free prescriptions.  But I already have both of them cos I'm type 2 diabetic.  Hmm.  All early flags of getting proper old eh?  But good news!  Found something!  I will qualify for a Senior Railcard.  Yay!  Designed to help poor OLD me get about for long SLOW rides back home on my bike...  Pooh!

I've writ many times before about my father telling my brother what is was like reaching 70.  A young mind in a broken body and all that.  I'm getting there.  Not that far off now issit?  

Except today I do not feel a jot of it.  Some say that my brain for sure has degenerated but apart from the occasional twinge between my ears and perhaps my knees and testicles when riding my bike; and having that big inertia feeling which I guess a fat Labrador might when I go out for walkies, well...  How should I feel?  For sure I don't feel my age - if you are supposed to feel anything?

Nonetheless, 60 years is some time on this planet.  Many of which I reflect upon in the quiet moments between the cycling adventures and the decorating.  The early years still burn bright.  Every time I drive my car I'm reminded of a particular Christmas in the early 70's.  Of my concentration whilst sat at the wheel of the battery powered car driving 'simulator'.  A plastic disk spinning with a tiny car held in place by a magnetic arm underneath.  I drive faster and faster.  Into the nadgery bits.  Sweat dripping off of my peachy eyebrows.  Lit from beneath to simulate night driving with me manically hunched over the damn thing trying to not crash.  

Yes, my driving remains the same today.  Should we ever bump into each other in Tesco's car park then, I'm sorry.  Just trying my best to avoid the Tesco Nazi's like any Ukranian might.  Bad lessons learnt and all that....

Everything though is still fresh in my mind.  I often bore Brad the Lad with stories about how when I was his age (oh to have 23 year old legs again) I would have no problems taking car engines / brakes / transmissions and electrics apart.  Can't say the same though about putting them all back together again.  And cycling to Scarborough and back - about 95 miles in a day.  Ooohhh my arse! My legs!  

Anything is possible when you’re young isn’t it?  Hmmm.  Thinking of my life in my 20's as a telephone engineer at BT and being super strong and fit.  Then into my 30's in BT's Network Management Centre and playing American Football.  Then into Europe in my late 30's living a life of work and play in Amsterdam.  Then the final 20 year long phase of my career at BT driving a management desk putting loads of weight on.  Picking up more service awards than the number of times Forrest Gump ever met the President.  And out of it all on the back of a mental crash at 55.  Chew, chew purbbbfffst! ... spat BT with the remains of me dripping down its chin.  Used and abused.  Crashed and burned.  Game over.  So it was time to go.  Take the release package. My best decision EVER!

Oh how I was going to retire to a yacht and do the silly long distance long way round stuff.  But no - not yet.  My pet wallet moth whispered to me the other day that sailing is just another way of quickly burning 50 pound notes which resulted in an early Halloween scream!   I am coastal skipper trained but that has not helped much as I still have an uncontrollable urge to shout "man overboard!" whenever I flush the downstairs toilet on a windy day.  Sail around the world?  Perhaps one day.

Right now tour cycling is my bag as you know by this blog.  And should I ever get my finger out I might, just might, finish the wallpapering before I hit 70.  No-one to push me you see... 

Over the years I have tried to kick start a small selection of meaningful relationships, perhaps to also start a family life, but failed miserably each and every time.  I've crashed and burned more times than Tom Cruise ever had Kelloggs cornflakes for breakfast.  I recall how at my cousin's second wedding earlier last year his younger brother, Steve, who is married with young children, looked me straight in the eye and said "Of all the people, Wayne, for sure you were the one who was going to get married and have a family.  I'd have bet my mortgage on it..."  

Did I really believe that I would get to this age and that life would be like this?  It's human isn't it to have regrets?  Que sera sera n'est-ce pas?

I'm thinking a lot of that song today.  Remember Doris Day?  Ah yes.  Did she not make that song famous in the film 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' ?  No that's not me either...  Here she is...

My mate and long time friend Max is now suffering from a debilitating Parkinson's disease.  His wife Linda invited me with them to a Dementia Yorkshire group event last week.  The aim is to give people who suffer with Dementia / Alzheimer's / Parkinson's a grand afternoon out.  Something different.  Rather than sitting at home vegetating.  

It was a nostalgic song and dance event.   Performed by a Yorkshire lass with the world's broadest South Yorkshire pit village accent tha nos.  Nonetheless, with the voice of an angel, singing hits from the 40's, the 50's the 60's.  I'm sat with Max and Linda in an open room surrounded by older folk.  Husbands with wives.  Other folk with their carers...

Now I know from spending time with my Uncle Con who was also a Dementia sufferer, that the older memories burn the brightest for the longest.  How he would tell me about his exploits at Terry's chocolate factory back in the day.  Then tell me again because he had forgotten that he'd told me.  Oh dear.  How such brain diseases are a problem that affects everyone.  If anyone in a family has Dementia / Alzheimer's / Parkinson's then everyone in the family suffers with it so severe are the dependencies on them.   And so is why it's one of the few charities I support.  

Every Friday afternoon we baked cakes together.  Being fragile in mind as well as body he did his best to stir the eggs, butter, sugar and flour together, not necessarily in that order.  Moments after putting the buns in the oven he would turn to me, look me straight in the eye and say, "are we gonna make some cakes today?". Bless.  A once stong man reduced to rubble.  It broke my heart to see him like that.  I miss him.  

Anyway we're sat together in the church hall and the coal miner's nightingale breaks into sweet song.  Que sera sera.  Listen to the words.  Put yourself in a room full of people, many of whom could not tell you what day of the week it was never mind who they were with.  Oh how they would begin to smile, start to sing along, to get up and dance.  I found it proper hard not to break out into floods of tears.  My eyes welled up.  I avoided eye contact until I managed to calm myself down.  

That was both a hard yet uplifting afternoon out.  I suspect none of the folk in that room imagined days like these.  What happened to the drinks by the pool in one's retirement.  Digging in the garden.  Babysitting grand and great grandchildren.  You know, living ones life with a cool drink in ones hand languishing in a deck chair whilst watching the sun go down.  Only to end up with days like these.  

I cannot predict the future.  No-one on this planet has a crystal ball.  Not even Poo Tin.

So this coming Thursday is just another day, only marked as a special moment because human beings have calendars on their digital watches.  Life will go on as it did.  But in the knowledge that it will not go on in quite the same way.  Are the best days of our lives behind us or still in front?  I'd rather look forward and imagine that there are some great times yet to be had.  That the time from now on is used as best as one can use it perhaps.  Doing the things you can do, the things that you want to do.  Every day.  I don't need a bucket list as lists are reserved for people who would rather make lists than getting on with life.  

God willing doing the things in this life that I enjoy will continue and perhaps in that journey I will find further contentment and happiness.  I'm pretty sure it won't be all about riding bikes although that is an important aspect of it - for now...  

That is until the day comes where my arse, testicles, knees, shoulders, back, eyes, brain and other bits fail.  Not necessarily in that order.  But I think it'll be my brain first going by some of the idiotic things I do and things I forget.  I think the degeneration has started...

Perhaps it's why Linda invited me to the event :-)

Ciao for now