The Joys of Getting Old.

I am feeling my age! 11.55am and I am just getting going. (At midnight I am usually quite lively.) Well as lively as a seventy three year old can be.Time is enevitably taking its toll. My wife has recently had explorative surgery for a heart condition and is suffering somewhat. She is waiting, apprehensively to have stents fitted. She has also been diagnosed with glaucoma. I am to find out next week if I am to have knee surgery. I am walking like an old man and I don't like it! This week alone the pair of us are at the doctors, the dentists, the hospital and the chiropodists! Mind you, many, many are worse off.
I am just going to buy some 'cheapo' reading glasses. from Costco. I have around six pairs but can find three pairs. One pair has an arm missing. One pair has part of an arm missing. One pair has screws missing. No pair stays on. I have just counted fourteen empty spectacle cases. I have no doubt there are further cases and glasses. No jokes about making a spectacle of myself please.

Charlie went to the doctor.
'Doctor' he said 'I keep seeing this spinning insect.'
'Don't worry' said the doctor, 'it's just a bug going round.'

My friend reckons the bloke next door has a glass eye. I asked him how he knew and he said it just came out when they were talking.

All this reminds me of a very early blog I did.(In April 2008 which would suggest I've been losing it for some time.) Considering I have just done a review for John Godber's play Losing the Plot at Derby Playhouse, all very apt don't you think!

An OAP let loose in the 20th Century

Like a weasel to a rabbit I am transfixed. Hours spent trying to master the technology, mainly unsucessfully yet the urge to continue is overpowering. What was it Albert Einstein said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." My incomprehension is unsurprising when you consider I even find an Idiot's Guide impossible to understand. Please tell me I am not the only one, or am I uniquely stupid when it comes to modern technology. And how strange I find myself posing questions to a screen, a substitite for the real world. An unreal situation akin to making love to a blow up doll or our childhood habit of smoking rolled up walnut leaves in an oakcup pipe. Both unsatisfactory substitutes for the real thing but better than nothing. I hasten to add I am not speaking from experience on the former.
Now I reckon my problems in the main stem from three sources. One, at my age I'm a bit long in the tooth to learn new technologies but I can but try. Two, I have recently been informed I am functioning on half a brain, maybe a bit more to be honest but some missing all the same. More of this at a later date but imagine what I could do it it was all there, so to speak.
And three, I need my eyes testing.
My ninety nine pence glasses from Home Bargains are good value but hardly the result of considered professional examination. But at least you get to try them out. Which is more than can be said for the local Lidl. A fierce gentleman, Croatian I think he is patrols the isles, and can spot from over twenty yards a customer opening the goods. As their glasses are packaged you therefore buy pot luck, so to speak. Their car park is full of wrecked cars or at least it deserves to be. Any day now they'll be selling white sticks.
I've thought my eyes needed testing for some time but a family function in The Devonshire, a posh pub in Baslow, Derbyshire finally made the fact inescapable. After a pint or two, or three, or four the need for the toilet was dire. Not surprising but at least it would suggest the old prostate is still working, if nothing else. Panic over and a might bit relieved so to speak, and, educated by frequent notices exorting us to 'Now wash your hands' I did as ordered and visited the hot air hand blower. Only posh as the pub was, the machine was totally ineffective, pathetic in the extreme. No rush of air, hot or otherwise. As I pondered so useless an apparatus and contemplated my next move I noticed a young man quizzically eyeing me from the urinal. Fearing I was about to be propositioned, I hastily withdrew my still wet hands from the machines orifice. It was only then I made out the wording on the machine, blurred in my case but cringingly embarrassing. The immortal words read 'Contraceptives, all colours and shapes, two pounds for three'.