After a long call with R last night, it might be time to take stock… It’s not the pleasantest of things to face the reality of the toll that old age takes on us! In short, R has had to face a few big issues, whereas I have been beset with a thousand niggles.
From top to bottom, my signs of ageing are all too clear. Hair – mostly gone; eyes – developing cataracts; ears – grown, tinnitus since 2011, and hearing fading; teeth – maybe half of real ones left and unlikely to magically grow back; respiratory tract – beset by seasonal allergies; body – shrinking; abdomen – days of flatness gone; legs – skin getting manky and dry; feet – cold; lower back – aches after a little bit of gardening. So that’s my Tinder profile sorted…
My enthusiasm for walking has all but disappeared. Flat and downhill are fine, but uphill has become increasingly difficult over recent years. I remember the first sign of a downward path (2017) when on a walk from Bents Green to Burbage valley: the gentle uphill along the Limb valley to Ringinglow was a serious struggle, and I had to rest at Ringinglow; then I got a couple of “Are you OK?“s from walkers along Houndkirk; and totally failed to get up onto Carl Wark. I did manage the same walk later in the year, but then discovered that my body was no longer capable of walking 11 miles: in Burbage, I felt good, so continued through Padley Gorge, but the climb up into the Longshaw estate totally wrecked me – had to keep pausing for breath and leg recovery, and the more or less flat walk onward to Fox House was in ultra-slow motion.
There was a time when my only consideration with walking was “Will I have enough time to catch transport back to Sheffield?” – distance, ascents, and weather were of no relevance. And then, last week in Venice, even flat walking became painful because of the furnace heat there, legs and lower back suffering most.
R is thankfully still cancer-free after 4 years since he was diagnosed, but still being subject to an array of never-ending tests and checkups – the latest being stupid concerns about his BP after he gave a high reading during a stressful visit. Next test – normal; but he was then forced to wear a BP monitor for 24 hours to check further – normal; and now must take another one this week…
He’s still managing to do plenty of exercise for someone approaching 79, but a pale shadow of former days. Running is impossible now. and walking a struggle because of bad knees, so it’s mostly cycling on road or on exercise bike.
He told me that Doddsy, Brigg’s export to France, has had to have a pacemaker fitted. R and Doddsy were far and away the fittest of our bunch, absolute fanatics for any form of exercise, and maintained this until recent years (Doddsy even went to live near the Alps in the 70s so that he could have some tough cycling).
And old friends? R is the only one I’ve been able to maintain regular contact with, must be for 65 years now. Lots of ex Brigg Grammar pupils returned to live in North Lincs and had meetups at the annual old-boys dinner or White Horse in Brigg. But that seems to have fallen away now, R tells me. As for all the Saturday night “jolly boys” from the era of the Royal and the Baths in Scunny, there has been no word in years.
But is there sadness? A little, I suppose. It’s all just so inevitable, isn’t it? But it gives way to new perspectives, new phases – new freedoms, even.