New Year -getting old!

Here are a few markers of decrepitude. Going baldy. There’s literally a big stamp on your forehead that screams baldy old fart. Your gums are white and receding and what teeth you have are yellow. The left hand that doesn't grip as well as it should and the right hand isn't what it was. Try opening a jar. Your balance is that of a two-year old child. You trip over things. Literally a five-year old could push you over.  When you trip, you fall. You go into the kitchen and come out carrying a colander and wonder what it was you went into the kitchen for and try and remember the thing you were trying not to forget. But you’ve wrote it down somewhere. Your body becomes a little stooped and shortens like a bow so you can fit into a cheaper coffin. You can’t sit comfortably in a chair because the chair is all wrong. Any bed you sleep in should be ok, because you can’t sleep and, anyway, when did everybody start snoring so much and creeping about their houses with the lights off making knocking noises? You blame the neighbours and have a long lie to show you won’t be bullied by their ghost tactics. Scary books or films only scare you now by how long they drone on for.   

I, of course, suffer from none of these things. But my right knee is a bit gypy and I can no longer run 100 yards (in my day it was yards) in ten minutes.  

You need to shit and take a sample, smear into a cardboard window, shut the tab and date it. You need to do this consecutively for three day. You need to seal up your shit samples in a special envelope and send it through the post. The NHS are screening you for bowel cancer. You don’t have bowel cancer. You childishly poo at the very idea of it and you turn up your nose. You’re old enough to know better.