Berating the Cycles.

The ageing process is bothering me again (there’s a reason.)

‘It comes to us all, JJ,’ people tell me. Yes, I know it does. If you’re going to offer me platitudes, wait until I’m properly old, would you? Or at least consider why it has to come to us all.

Suppose I don’t want it anywhere near me. Suppose I don’t want to sit in the corner on my birthday wearing a silly hat that somebody has placed at a jaunty angle just so they can say ‘wow, you look really sexy in that,’ which is pretty bloody ridiculous, and the bright young things skip around singing ‘happy birthday, great granddad’ and patronise me to hell and back, while I worry whether my teeth will cope with the challenge of the ice cream, and whether I’ll stay continent enough to avoid an Embarrassing Moment. And they all expect you to smile and be grateful.

Bugger that! I don’t want it. So why? Why, why, why?

Regeneration; that’s the key. You have to get old so you can regenerate and be a bright young thing again. Oh, goody. So what about the bit in between when your muscles start aching, your tendons get stiff, your midriff shows signs of becoming just slightly out of proportion with the rest of you, your hair begins to mysteriously disappear, your face develops more lines than Clapham fucking Junction, and your eyes have more bags hanging around them than a whore house in Old Barcelona?

Mmm... Start planning for the next life, I suppose. But then it’ll all happen again, won’t it? Will I ever get used to it?