A survival guide, and more, for 50-somethings
I never dreamed older people would try to overthrow The State in their spare time – until I saw pictures from The Capitol
WHEN I STARTED writing this blog, I wondered what the future might hold for me and other 50-somethings.
I thought – correctly as it turned out – that I’d be writing mostly about dodgy knees, grey pubes, baldness, and binge drinking.
But, until I saw the pictures from The Capitol, I never thought about us rioting.
Continue reading “Rioting And The Over-50s”A first run for six weeks has inspired a happy flurry of similes!
MY BODY SAID ‘Yes’, but my mind said ‘No’.
My body said ‘Yes’, but my mind said ‘No’.
My body said ‘Yes’, but my mind said ‘No’.
But, in the end, my body won – I was going to try running for the first time since I crocked my knee in October.
Continue reading “Running Like A Mouth Full Of Cotton Wool”If you’re feeling blue, you could do worse than get on a bike
I FELT that I had to cycle yesterday morning: even though I was tired from riding the day before, and my bad knee was sore. Even though it was 9.30am on Monday and I ought to be working.
I was feeling moderately bad, mentally. The excitement of my birthday week and the weekend that followed it had dissipated and left me with a bad case of the Monday blues.
There’s something about the mess of a Monday – Sunday’s unwashed dishes, the pile of washing in the basket, unread emails piling up in my inbox all weekend – that unmans me, and makes me want to run away from my life.
I caught myself ruminating that maybe now that I’d reached 55, I should stop there and end it all because I’d reached the end of my usefulness. I thought about how my brother and I don’t talk and how it was probably my fault…
Then, just after I set off, I saw a pensioner and told myself: “You live like a pensioner. You don’t have the energy or the discipline to live a full life. All you’re fit for is staying at home and pottering around until you die.”
As I said, I wasn’t having a great day. But the longer I cycled, the more forgiving of myself I became.
Continue reading “Give Us Hills, Not Pills”As I approach a dreaded birthday in lockdown, my bike has become my only solace
I’m turning 55 this week, which seems like a terrible birthday.
In marketing terms, I’ll no longer belong in the company of anyone who’s still in their early 50s, and I’m dead to hip young 45-year-olds.
Also according to the people who sell us things, I’m now likely to think, buy and do the same stuff as someone who’s 64.
By my own reckoning, turning 55 means that I truly am moving from middle age to old age – but without the wisdom and perspective to appreciate getting older.
Continue reading “Riding It Out”I’ve felt blue throughout my life, but self-acceptance and good habits can help
I WOKE UP at four this morning and had trouble getting back to sleep.
I just couldn’t stop my brain from worrying – and all my usual fixes, my equivalents of counting sheep, weren’t helping.
So I tried to settle myself down by thinking about good things – any good thing, like the well-received meal I’d made a few hours before… or about how I was approaching another anniversary of coming off antidepressants.
Continue reading “‘It’s just part of you’ – what I’ve learned about living with chronic depression”I don’t go big on the MAMIL look, but autumn runs aren’t perfect without my tights
I reckon that there’s a lot not to like about autumn.
There are lots of little things to loathe, instead: like having to switch from drying clothes ecologically on the line to radiators, or an energy-guzzling, tumble dryer.*
Bath towels and shower mats no longer dry themselves magically; you’re waking up in the dark again and then – one suddenly pitch-black October evening – discovering that all the light bulbs you didn’t use throughout the summer are nevertheless not working.
But there’s one thing I love about autumn: braving the cold and wet, with my running tights on.
Continue reading “A Man And His Tights (A Love Story)”I’m finally embracing my Voltarol Years – and the prospect of Death
THE OTHER day, disgusted with myself after a weekend of sinking lager beers in the garden, I forced myself out for a punishment run in the late summer heat.
I cajoled the legs into completing a slow 10k and felt better. Less trashed, that is.
For the rest of the day, I sat working at the computer. But, by knocking-off time, found I’d seized up, tighter than a Tory’s tear duct.
Continue reading “Clunk-Click After Every Trip”Coronavirus has helped me accept that it’s fine to be like everyone else
I’ve been thinking a lot about over-indulging while we’ve been in lockdown – and I know I’m not the only one.
The other day, a friend sent a list of Coronavirus phrases trending on What’sApp, including “Covid-10” – meaning the extra 10lbs some of us have put on through comfort eating and drinking since March 23.
In the UK, alcohol sales jumped by 22 per cent in March, while the tendency to binge and put on weight – also known as “fattening the curve” – was likewise observed in countries that went into lockdown before us.
When the UK followed Italy indoors, the novelist Francesca Melandri wrote from Rome to warn us of the changes that would take place in our lives, many of them involving food.
“First of all, you’ll eat,” Melandri warned. “Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do… You’ll eat again. You will not sleep well… You will put on weight. You’ll look for online fitness training…You will eat again.”
Continue reading “How Putting On Weight In Lockdown Made Me More Humble”I try to act like I’m not old, but Life keeps sending me horrid reminders
I’M OLD! OLD! Old as mould….
I mean: I try to act like age is just a number.
I try to stay just a bit current and not put limitations on what I can do at 50-something.
I try to keep improving, but Life always finds a way to remind me that, every day, I’m even more decrepit than I ever have been…
Continue reading “Thick But Cute: It Beats Running Like A Toilet Duck”I don’t want to be Mr Potato Head any more
I’m thinking seriously about ending one of the longest and most satisfying relationships of my life.
It’s one that’s gone on for longer than my marriage and for more time than I knew my Dad, or my Mum.
But I think it’s finally time that I stopped eating crisps.
Continue reading “I’m A Runner, Not A Walker’s”