Tag Archives: senior moments

Thoughts on Imperfection and Unreasonable Expectations

George V – Clitheroe

I could have sworn I wrote a post yesterday. To be fair, I can’t recall a subject, so I may just have thought about writing a post. It was going to be brilliant, as the unwritten ones so often are.

The prose was going to flow like the sweet icy water that runs over stones in an upland stream. The wit was going to illuminate like shafts of late spring sunshine and the general effect was going to be both exhilarating and soothing at the same time. Unfortunately you will have to take my word for it, as I forgot to write it.

My poetry is much the same. Rich billows of vocabulary, always in perfect order, roll across the surface of my mind. But by the time they reach the paper, assuming I don’t forget them on the way towards my pen, they stutter and demand a rewrite as they hit the paper, much like the scratchy and imperfect nib of my malfunctioning fountain pen.

Squirrel in a bin – Clitheroe Castle

Life can be unkind, though at least, as you can see from the title of the post, my ability to write pretentious Victorian titles remains undimmed.

Perhaps I should work on that, developing a body of work in the style of Arthur Enfield Clitherow, railway clerk with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (specifically the Ribble Valley Line) who dreams of life on the canals, or sometimes even dares to speculate about life as a ticket inspector on the Canadian Pacific Railway. I feel a sonnet coming on about the trials and tribulations of a man with an inefficient heating system in his lonely ticket office. Oh yes, a whole new world awaits . . .

Clitheroe from the castle

When Did You Notice You Were Getting Old?

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Angel of the North

The question in the title assumes that (a) you are old and (b) you consider that things are changing. If you are young or defying the mathematics of increasing birthdays then this probably not a post you will identify with.

I first noticed I was changing when, making my way home from work one evening, I was pottering along Derby ring road, contemplating a wasted day and looking forward to the pleasures of being jumped on by kids and arguing about bedtimes. At that point a young woman driver overtook me whist gesticulating. I had not done anything wrong, but she didn’t think I was moving fast enough. At that point I realised that I would have to make way for a new generation of impatient and ambitious young people. I was probably about 35 at the time.

Bond, James Bond . . .

A few years later, I fell and hurt my knee. Going to see the doctor because it wasn’t clearing up I was told “You can’t expect to heal as fast at your age.”

Then there was my first prostate exam. It’s not something that happens to young people. I’ve never felt the same about the sound of snapping latex gloves since then. I can’t even face the prospect of wearing Marigolds for washing up.

Then we move forward to the nurse who spoke to me in baby talk. I was in my mid-fifties at the time and wasn’t aware I was projecting signs of being in my dotage.

It’s been steadily downhill since then, with various ailments and senior moments. The latest two senior moments relate to internet shopping. I was altering the order for Saturday (tomorrow) when I realised I wasn’t. I had gone on the wrong order and was altering the order for 23rd December, which explained why it wasn’t quite how I remembered it. Of course, I’ve told you this before. I’ve been repeating myself for some years now – it’s another part of growing old. What I didn’t tell you was that Saturday (tomorrow) order was actually for 1st December. That’s today. I found that out this morning. At first I wondered why they had sent my notifications a day early, then it dawned on me.

O is for Oak Tree (also known as Quercus Robur)

I find I’m slower on the uptake these days too.

Pictures are from the A-Z 10p set. It’s supposed to reflect Britishness, but there’s a distinct lack of grumpy old men, lying politicians and snowflakes.

There are other 10p coins, but that’s enough for now.

Day 146

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Last night, I forgot my password to order my pills on-line. Or I thought I did. What I had actually forgotten was my user name. As I was drifting off to sleep I realised what I had been doing wrong, made a mental note, woke Julia to ask her to remind me in the morning (She wasn’t happy. Some people can be very cranky when woken to assist a loved one.) and went to sleep a happy man. This morning she suggested that I really should make sure I have a note pad next to the bed. This, it seems, will prevent serious repercussions if I wake her in the middle of the night again.

EIIR Medallion – 90th Birthday. Looks like they are reusing aforty year old portrait.

Chalk up another one under the heading of “senior moment”. I really must write all this stuff down, despite the instructions from the NHS about not writing usernames and passwords down. It’s not as if I’m a conduit to a desirable cache of narcotics – there are no users sleeping rough and wondering about their next fix of Warfarin or Methotrexate. . .

Tonight I tried to log in and the site was down. What made it worse was that I then remembered that we are having a special Bank Holiday next week to celebrate the Queen being on the throne for 60 years – the Platinum Jubilee. This will delay stuff like prescriptions.

EiiR Diamond Jubilee 1952-2012

If she reigns much longer we will end up with a constitutional crisis about which metal comes next. Given good health and top class medical attention she could well make it.

I wonder what it feels like to be Prince Charles? I’m sure he’s very fond of his mother but there must be a little bit of frustration that she won’t retire. Even Popes retire, though Benedict XVI was the first one to do so in 598 years. The Dutch, as with so many things, set a good example in this matter.

Queen Elizabeth II 1953

The top picture is a Coronation medal from 1953. The rest are various other commemoratives I happen to have photographed. It must be hard being Queen and looking at your ageing effigy on coins and medals. Only the stamps preserve her youthful portrait. Me, I only need to see how old I am when I look in a mirror and as I don’t shave, I don’t often look in a mirror.

Oooops!

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I’ve done it again. Not long to midnight and I started reading instead of writing. At school, they said I could do better. That is the one thing I have preserved from youth, I still could do better. Actually, as the promised Limerick will show, I have also preserved my love of a smutty joke.

Last week . . . something happened. Unfortunately, as I wrote “Last week” I forgot what it was. I don’t usually lose my thread when I’m sitting at the computer, so I am clearly losing my marbles at an increasing rate.

Give it a few more years at this rate and I’ll have to tie an address label to my wrist so kindly strangers can return me to Julia when I forget where I live. The only problem with that system is that it’s open to manipulation if she puts someone else’s address on the label . . .

I have 102 words left before I hit my self-imposed minimum target, though I usually find that mentioning it is good for another twenty or thirty.

The major discussion at work today was over the question of when W. H. Smith, the well known stationers, became WHSmith. The decline of punctuation in High Street chains (and I’ve certainly covered it before in relation to Bettys Tearoom (sic) ) is mirrored by a continuing decline in standards in public life. That’s why we now do our online cake shopping at Mrs Botham’s – if she has a proper regard for apostrophes, I feel she can be trusted in the matter of comestibles.

If you can’t trust therm with punctuation, what can you trust them with?

Senior Moments and Postal Problems

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I’m not currently at my best. If I tell you that I went through most of the day under the impression that it was Tuesday you may get some idea of the impairment suffered by my softening brain.

This was despite the fact I knew the car had gone away on Wednesday, which was yesterday. A simple process of deduction could have told me that it was Thursday today but I managed to miss out on that basic step.

This morning I managed to do the parcels on my own as the owner sorted a big trade order, and when it came time to get the parcels to the post office he noticed that I’d stamped several parcels up with the right stamps for Special Delivery but had stuck the labels for Signed For delivery on them.

That looks very inelegant – Special Delivery, I can just about live with, though the old name Registered didn’t, in my opinion, need changing. But Signed For sounds like an incomplete phrase rather than a description of a postal service. It was better when it was called Recorded Delivery.

In an ideal world you wouldn’t need this sort of postal service. Unfortunately there are so many thieves, liars and idiots on eBay that we need to use it to protect ourselves.

The normal problem is that somebody gets in touch a couple of weeks after you post something and says it wasn’t delivered.

Stamps, stamps, stamps

We then go on the Royal Mail site and put in the tracking number. Normally it shows that the post office tried to deliver it and, as nobody was there, put a card through the letter box telling the addressee to go and pick it up or arrange to have it delivered again when they will be in.

Unfortunately people don’t always see the bright red card. They also often seem to think it’s my job to arrange the redelivery for them, even though I don’t know when they will be in.

Some, even though it’s been signed for, insist that it hasn’t been delivered and tell us they want another parcel sending free of charge.It is possible that someone has signed for it fraudulently, but again, that really isn’t my problem.

One man actually accused us of knowing when it would be delivered and driving up to Scotland to sign for it and steal it. We were tactful, because he clearly had more problems than missing post.

It’s not even as if it was a sustainable business model…

And at that point, having established that some people have worse senior moments that I do, I will sign off.

A Day at the Coast

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Sunday has traditionally been my day for domestic chores, as Julia spent seven years years rising at 5am to start work at 6.00. As I was her driver (there are no buses at that time) it made sense for me to start work rather than going back to bed (though this was a guideline rather than a strict rule). That is how Sunday came to be the day for laundry, shopping and cooking in advance.

Thanks to a council decision to stop paying overtime (because you really want to get up at 5am and work 10 hours for the same hourly rate as the people working 9-5 during the week, don’t you?) we decided it would be a good time to call it quits. It had served us well when we were running the group on the farm but we had other jobs now and although we miss the money, we like having Sunday free. The pay cut wasn’t due to come in until next year but there were a couple of other factors, including aggression from customers, which helped make the decision.

Until that time Julia had only had Wednesdays off and so I negotiated that for myself when I started work in the shop. I’ve worked a couple of Wednesdays recently, as holiday cover, and Julia was on jury duty last week. She’s on jury duty next Wednesday too, and I’m in hospital to the the arthritis specialist the Wednesday after that.

That’s why we decided to sideline the Sunday chores and head off for the coast today. It looked from the weather map as if the middle of the day would be dry and that proved to be the case,

It rained in Nottingham before we set off but was dry all day until we started back. We drove through some moderately heavy rain for about half an hour just outside Boston, but that was all. On our return to Nottingham we found standing water, which suggests they had more rain here than we had at the coast.

We didn’t set off early, and we were home in daylight, so it was a nice relaxing run in the countryside, with fish and chips and a visit to a craft fair where Julia bought a cushion. She likes cushions. It’s one of those strange woman things. I’m a man – I don’t actually understand what they are for. If you have a bad back roll up a towel. There are no other possible uses of cushions.

If you want something to throw, to cover a stain on a chair or to decorate a room – use a book.

The photographs were meant to be from a Community Garden in Sutton-on-Sea. There aren’t many of them as I forgot there was no card in the camera. Every time I do that I swear I will never be so stupid again. I think this is the third time I’ve done it.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

These are a few photos of the flowers in the garden – I did manage to get them out of the camera in the end.

I also dropped my glasses in the garden whilst taking the pictures an said to myself: “Leave them and take the photograph. Just remember to pick them up before you go.”

I didn’t remember.

Fortunately they only cost £2.

Memorial Bench – Pte Martin Robinson 1 WFR

This is a memorial bench from the garden. The 1 WFR is 1st Battalion Worcester and Foresters Regiment, an amalgamation of the Sherwood Foresters and the Worcestershire Regiment. After further amalgamations they are now The Mercian Regiment.

I looked him up when I got home. Martin Robinson was 21 when he was shot by a sniper in Londonderry in 1972.

I’m almost tempted to make a political statement here, but I won’t. I will, however, make one comment. He was somebody’s child and his life was cut short because of decisions made by politicians. The same could be said about every one of the 3,532 people killed because of the troubles between 1969 and 2001.

Maybe we should take a moment and think about that.

Unfortunately, I can’t get the photos out of internal memory. Leave it with me, there may be some by tomorrow…

As you can see, I did get them out of internal memory. Not sure if it was worth it so I have left a few of the space-fillers in.

Oh, these senior moments get worse!

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Life after the Care Farm