CONTAINS RECYCLED MATERIAL
“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today,” said Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers. With remarkable foresight, he may well have been talking about me because just about everyone I have lived and worked with has probably said it at one time or another. The criticism is, I’m afraid, fair. Instead I have lived more by Mark Twain’s alternative view which went, “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done (the) day after tomorrow just as well.”
In terms of putting things off, little has changed. I still have a list, regrettably quite a long list, of things that should really have been done by yesterday. None medical, you will doubtless be relieved to hear, but things that I should be getting on with, like Christmas presents and holiday insurance. My memory is so bad – and always has been – so I need to write a list, or preferably lists so I don’t forget the increasing number of undones in my life.
I would argue that some of this is down to my conditions, maybe my age old clinical depression and my recently diagnosed but still age old ADHD, but just as much is down to a lackadaisical attitude to life. Sometimes, I never get round to doing things, but I know, since I frequently hector others about it, time will not wait for me. My bucket list, my to do list, call it what you will, is a very full bucket list and if I am not careful, continuing to live Mark Twain’s way, there will be few crossings out.
I am fond of saying that age is just a number and of course that’s true. But it is also a thing, too, and many a day comes along when age affects me in ways I wasn’t expecting. Take this morning, for example. I woke up with a very painful ankle and had no idea why. I limped into the shower and out again, then after getting dressed (you will be relieved to read), I limped to the car, drove to Sainsbury’s and limped around the store before – well, limping home. What the hell is causing this pain? I have a feeling it’s an old football injury from circa 40 years ago when I got clattered in a tackle, played through the pain, as they say, and just got on with it, regardless of the likely effects in old age. Hell, you don’t think about that at the time. I once broke my ankle while playing on a pitch near Frenchay hospital, drove home in agony and gradually the pain lessened until it became manageable, albeit permanent. Now my ankle clicks loudly as I walk. When I saw a specialist, he basically told me I was an idiot. I had broken the ankle, quite badly as it turned out, I should have had it reset (it was now set all wrong, hence the clicking sound) and it was now becoming arthritic. I fear that is why I have ankle pain today.
If I had planned something that required even a modest level of physical exertion today, such as a longish walk or a round of golf, I’d have cancelled. On the actual day, mind, pissing off anyone who would have been with me. Add to that the long Covid from the autumn of 2023, which seems to have made my asthma permanently worse, the Mark Twain joke is very much on me now. These days, I literally have to put off what may be done (the) day after tomorrow just as well because there is no alternative. It’s nature’s way of providing a warning shot across my metaphorical bows.
If I wanted to go on a lengthy camping expedition – and to be fair, I have never wanted to do that – I don’t think my body would take it. It’s not just the requirement of needing to know where the nearest toilet is, but the aches and pains of assembling a tent. Or a holiday that would necessitate a lengthy drive feels an impossibility, not least because my partner, the shared driver, seems to be falling apart almost as quickly as I am.
The aches, pains and, certainly in the case of Covid, illnesses have come back to haunt me. I used to look with pathetic amusement at older folk who struggled to catch the bus because they could no longer run for the bus, but I don’t now because I am one of these old, increasing infirm old codgers. And much as I wish I would do something to reverse the ageing process, I am depressingly resigned to the simple fact that you can’t fight the fella with the Brite Nightgown.
For these reasons, and more, I am trying to rattle through my bucket list before a rattle of a different kind arrives, the death rattle. Don’t know where, don’t know when but I do know that the many things I can do today I won’t be able to do tomorrow. And while I try not to look back too often, I shall never regret leaving the wacky world of full time work nearly a decade before the state pension age because I have done so many things I wouldn’t have otherwise done and anyway who wants to be the richest man in the graveyard?
Listen to one who thinks he knows. Whether or not you accept that this life is not a trial run and no one here gets out alive, perhaps by not thinking too hard about The End or hoping that you will survive your own death and go to heaven (or hell), there are no guarantees. Waiting however many years for that retirement pension to arrive and putting off the things you really want to do in life until later is, quite frankly, a gamble that a) you will make it or b) that you will make it in one piece.
Reality is not always a cheery companion in life. Hoping that somehow I might manage to retain the relative fitness and healthiness of my teenage years was an occasional dream, but nothing more than that.
I would not dream of telling anyone else how to live their life. In the end, you do what’s right for you, whether that’s by doing all that bucket list stuff now or taking a punt that you’ll still be able to do it one day and that your loved ones will still be around, or fit and well enough, to enjoy it with you.
I’ve wasted far too much along the way to stop doing the things I still want to do and am still capable of doing. And in the next year or so, all being well, I’m going to many more of them. Because one thing I have learned in life is that some day never comes. That’s why for the things that matter to me, I am not going to wait, just in case some day does come along. Along with the man in the Brite Nightgown.
