No quiz meant that I had to spend two and a half hours drinking beer and conversing with my Sunday night quizzing chums. There's Mike who was seventy last October, Danny who will be seventy in July and Mick who will be sixty five in the spring. He's the spring chicken in the team. I will be sixty nine in the autumn - if I make it that far.
We spent a little time reflecting on the business of ageing. All three of my chums have daily pills to take for various ailments and conditions. Fortunately, I don't take any medication at all. No pills for me. I guess I am lucky that way.
Recognising that "The End" is just up ahead, I told them that I want to make sure that any books I read from now on should be worth reading. I don't want to read any crap. They could understand the point that I was making. Time is precious and it is running out. Maybe COVID has emphasised this.
We also spoke about hearing in noisy locations. Increasingly I find it difficult to hear people in noisy places - even when they are sitting right next to me. The muffled background bass seems to take over. There are only so many times you can say, "I'm sorry, could you say that again?" In a way, it was reassuring to discover that the lads knew exactly what I was talking about.
I don't think about growing old and then dying very often. I just get on with my life, taking each day as it comes. Graveyards tell us that these journeys we are on will all reach the same destination but what a grim life it would be if ageing and death became our foremost mental preoccupations. As Dylan Thomas said, let us "rage, rage against the dying of the light".
I still haven't recovered from turning 70 in 2020. I'm planning on working backwards from now on.
ReplyDeleteIf you walk backwards you might crack your skull on a lamppost ADDY. What is a 71 year old senior citizen doing up at 11.50pm? Grab your Horlicks and get up to bed this instant!
DeleteI rarely think about how old I am, or about dying except to occasionally wonder which one of my kids would like which of my "things". The all have their own homes already full of stuff and nothing here screams "heirloom" or "antique".
ReplyDeleteMy next birthday is the big 70, so maybe I should start feeling old soon?
I notice your blog title is "Drifting through Life". It seems a good way to me River.
DeleteYou're a lucky man to not have to take any medications at your advanced age.
ReplyDeleteAs for thinking about death, I think about it all the time. I've lost four friends younger than me to cancer already and most of my patients are dying. I try to pretend they aren't but it's hard sometimes.
I guess that in your branch of nursing death is always right there - in your face. Hard to avoid it.
DeleteI increasingly ponder about old age and death, although I can't say I am afraid of dying. Perhaps it is the realisation that even a modest bucket list is probably not achievable now. Time is passing rapidly. You are a rare person to not take any pill at all at your age. I assume that isn't because you never have a doctor check up.
ReplyDeleteWell that could be part of it. They would probably tell me to take statins but I have heard that they are not flavoursome.
DeleteThe consultant actually told Tom it would be wise for him to come off of Statins as he had lost so much muscle strength whilst taking them.
DeleteAnd you have a very sensible last paragraph. the last thing you want to do is ruin the last part of your life by grieving about your own death. And get your hearing checked. It sounds like you might need hearing aids . I got hearing aides when I was about 79.They don't cure everything but they're better than nothing. The suckers cost too much money...about $6500..
ReplyDelete$6500? We could have a superb holiday with that. Might even make it to Red Deer.
DeleteI find it staggering that I'm actually 75. I wonder if someone got the date wrong on my birth certificate? I only feel 74.
ReplyDeleteYou might be 76!
DeleteOur pub quiz is going to be held tomorrow night for the first time in almost two years, and my team and I were booked for our usual table - but we have cancelled our participation. The voice of reason tells most of us to stay home, with the Omicron variant spreading like wildfire even among fully vaccinated folks. We hope to get another chance soon... when mingling with crowds will feel safer again (if it ever will).
ReplyDeleteLike you, I don't need any daily pills. It shocks me to see how many of my age group started taking blood pressure medication and other stuff as far back as 10 years, when we were in our early forties. The only medication I need regularly is my daily eye drops, to keep the inner eye pressure within limits that won't damage my optic nerves any further.
Some days I feel my age more than other days, but generally, I feel fine and hope to spend many more years walking and hiking. I'll be 54 this March.
At 54, to me you are similar to a teenage girl. When I was teaching I was surprised by the number of colleagues around me who took anti-depressants.
DeleteOccasionally I do ponder the inevitable end but I really don't feel ready to go yet. I am hoping the skinny bloke with the scythe holds off for a while.
ReplyDeleteHas Lord Peregrine been cutting the grass?
DeleteSo pleased to hear that you do not take any medications. I am the same. If I had listened to the Doctors over the years I would be on a cocktail of them now but chose to ignore them. I still seem to be functioning and in fact am functioning better than friends who are swallowing pills wholesale.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that there are time when pills are vital, for instance, Tom would probably be dead not if he did not take Warfarin, but a lot of other drugs are money makers for the doctors and not always needed.
Tom took Ramipril for over 20 years and I am sure that this is the cause of his lung disease. I found an FDA paper online that actually says this.
https://www.ehealthme.com/ds/ramipril/fibrosis/
Of course the consultant would not say yes or no and the Doctor is reluctant to agree but it's there in black and white and even though it is a few at the moment I'm sure he was one of the unlucky one's.
He has never smoked and does not drink, he has never worked in an environment to cause lung problems.
So, keep it up YP and hopefully you'll be tramping those hills for a while yet, lol
Briony
x
Thanks for the prescription Dr Cater!
DeleteWhat a topical post for me today YP. My mother died ten years ago today. I think the walking keeps you fit.
ReplyDeleteBetter to go walking than smoking fags. Sorry for your loss Dave - even though it was ten years back. Mourning lasts forever.
DeleteThe Yorkshire Pudding Complete Guide to Ageing for Wimps and the Worried Well.
ReplyDeleteStep One: Get off your arse and go for a walk. (With apologies to those who are wheelchair bound or otherwise disabled).
DeleteThe inevitable end just occasionally passes through my consciousness, mostly when I read about something that will happen when I know I won't be around. Nor do I ponder on my advancing years either, though sometimes it comes as a shock when I realise how old I am!
ReplyDeleteWhen my mother was in her early 70's, she started making references to when she'd be "gone". We'd ask her where she was going and she'd reply that she wouldn't last forever, and was nearing her sell by date! She lived to be almost 93, so I've always thought those first comments on her demise were somewhat premature.
I had two great, great, aunts (sisters) who lived to be 105 and 107 respectively, and in light of your blog, I wonder how many years they spent wondering which would be their last.
It makes sense to get your hearing tested, it's something, like many of our faculties, that diminishes with age.
"When I'm Gone" sounds like the title of a Country and Western hit - perhaps by Dolly Parton.
DeleteYesterday was my birthday which you very kindly remembered and then you mentioned Led Zeppelin as having the same birth date. This was seized on by family, and heads down to phones, they found out their birth equivalents. Andrew found out that three of us sitting on the same sofa all had birthdays compatible with Led Zeppelin, mine was the exact date. So when there is no quiz to do just see who you share a birthday with. Jimmy Page was mine.
ReplyDeleteI share my birthday with Matt Damon and Sigourney Weaver.
DeleteEh. We all die, but we also all live. Let us enjoy the living while we live.
ReplyDeleteThat is a champion philosophy Debby.
DeleteI like the hanging signpost outside the inn, being a connoisseur of signposts.
ReplyDeleteIn Gloucestershire there was a roadside inn with a beautiful signpost.
The image was of a horse and cab stuck halfway up a snowy hillside.
The harassed cabman was wearing a three-cornered hat and frock coat, the horse's head was bent with exhaustion.
The steep incline is the major approach road to the inn, now closed.
A shop selling musical instruments in Moreton-on-Marsh had a wonderful sign.
A flute carved out of wood, painted in gold, hung outside.
In the window a notice said the shop was closing. Very sad.
Haggerty
I like original signs too. In Vancouver we came across an antiques and curios shop that had a big stack of old English pub signs. I wanted to bring a couple home but they would not fit in my suitcase.
DeleteI wish you had had time to photograph those pub signs, Neil.
DeleteMaybe I should always say pub. Kingsley Amis said Inn and Ale were pretentious. Call me pretentious.
There is a clever young woman who does a writing blog from Vancouver.
*Shaelinwrites* and *reedsy* are her two YouTube channels.
She has finished a four-year creative writing degree and shares her knowledge.
*Wishbone by Shaelin Bishop on Vimeo.*
I think she will be a serious writer.
She had burn-out last year over several months and was unable to write or even read much.
Haggerty
Signourey Weaver appeared in a film I liked, The Year of Living Dangerously.
ReplyDeleteFrom a novel by Christopher Koch, set in Jakarta, Indonesia.
*The Year of Living Dangerously - L'Enfant - Vangelis.* YouTube.
Koch (1932-2013) was from Tasmania, its austere landscape haunted another of his novels, The Doubleman, which has an occult theme.
One of my favourite Australian novelist, David Malouf, seems to have lost the motive to write. The Great World is his best novel.
I am glad that Helen Garner, Hannah Kent and Kate Grenville are still productive.
Haggerty
I have heard of "The Great World". Maybe one day I will read it.
DeleteThe eponymous self-taught painter in *Harland's Half Acre* (1984) Malouf's earlier novel, made me think of Sidney Nolan, but there were many similar Oz artists.
DeleteI approach fiction and film the way I approach poetry, music, architecture and painting; perhaps I picked this up from John Berger's essays.
I don't have Sky or Netflix, but I noticed an ad in the Winter (2021-22) edition of the magazine Films and Filming.
*YourScreen Virtual Cinema brings you the best films you've never heard of.
View films you can't see anywhere else.*
I haven't been out of Glasgow in two years, nor in a cinema or theatre so maybe yourscreen.net is the answer.
Before Xmas I bought a DVD of *The Wild Pear Tree* by Nuri Bilge Ceylan one of my favourite directors.
JH
As much as you walk, it isn't surprising to me the lack of medication taken. I am certainly more quick to put a book down and try another one than I was in my younger years. Here I thought it was just me getting smarter and now you are saying it is because time is running out!
ReplyDeleteSorry to put that one on you Mister Ed!
DeleteAh- you've easily got a good twenty years to go, Mr. P. Just keep doing what you're doing.
ReplyDeleteMy father died at 65, my oldest brother at 62. I doubt I have got twenty years. Ten would be good.
DeleteMy parents died in their seventies, but from different cancers. I don't have those so I'm aiming higher. My grandmother made it to 96.
DeleteWell, Mr. Pudding, I'm only a few months from my 82nd birthday so I'd guess I'm going to visit the Great Void a lot sooner than you. I don't worry or think about it much, except sometimes in the middle of the night when I am wakeful and begin thinking about all that my survivors are going to have to deal with. In the meantime, I try to keep my humor with me.
ReplyDeleteYou could help the survivors by sorting out your affairs. I know that I should do the same.
DeleteYes, I'm doing that and leaving them a file of instructions. Like how to plan the party!
DeleteIt fascinates me how humans are able to plow on through life, day to day, even while knowing what will ultimately become of all of us. It's a sort of necessary denial, isn't it? I agree with you on the reading, which is why I'm preparing to skim some of "The Story of Mankind." LOL
ReplyDeleteNo LOL for that. Try COL instead... Cry Out Loud.
DeleteI think about death quite a bit, but not in a morbid sense. That's probably because my parents both died at an early age (for them and for me). My pathologist brother once told me that he often found abnormalities in an autopsy that would never have killed a person. Yet, if a doctor had found it during that person's life, he/she would have felt they had to "treat" it. Hopefully you know your own body well enough to visit a doctor if you feel there's a need.
ReplyDeleteI would like a heart check up as my father and oldest brother died when their hearts malfunctioned.
DeleteAlthough I'm a "spring chicken" I do take 5 milligrams of bisoprolol for my blood pressure. I blame it partly on genetics since both parents were/are hypertensive. I also have a mostly type A personality. Ugh. I would really LIKE to be laid back and calm. Just not who I am, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of bisoprolol pills. Do they taste nice? I would prefer banana flavoured ones.
DeleteNo point in giving it any thought except to tidy one's affairs to save other's trying to sort them out. You may last another 30 years hale and hearty. You may be hit by a bus or a massive heart attack tomorrow. Worse still you could get Alzheimers or have a stoke. It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
ReplyDeleteYou do seem to have a healthy attitude to mortality and fate Graham. Is a stoke similar to a stroke?
DeleteRage rage indeed - though I'd not spend too long reading his poems or you'll get quite depressed. A friend died recently in his late fifties - tragic and unexpected. I was left thinking, does that mean I should try to be all fit and healthy, or say sod it, life's too short and too much of a lottery to worry! As you say, best to get on with it and take each day and its joys as it comes.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in my teens, I read almost everything that Dylan Thomas ever published. "Fern Hill" remains a very special poem to me. When you read it aloud the love of language and of life itself comes over so magically.
Delete