Life gets tough when you get to my age. That’s sixty three, by the way. It isn’t the same as it used to be. For starters, I’m beginning to forget things. Not the major bits of my memory. I still remember my name, the fact that I have two sons and a daughter and a pension to collect from the post office every Thursday. It’s the little details that slip past my peripheral. Like the other day when I took my newspaper with me to accompany the emptying of my bowels. After twenty odd minutes of reading through the sports section and the reader’s letters, I wiped off and got up to flush. But there wasn’t a single piece of excrement in the bowl. How do you figure that one out? I’d forgotten that I hadn’t taken a crap! Life sure can get tough.

            I don’t have the energy that I did when I was a youngster. It’s been quite a while that I’ve qualified to be called a youngster. I didn’t see it coming but it came just the same. The shortness of breath is the worst. I’m not a smoker, never have been. But now I know exactly how they feel those 20-a-dayers. Just pulling on a new pair of socks makes me pause to catch my wind, and that’s just between socks. I’m moaning and groaning a lot more too. Giving out these sounds that make me sound as if someone’s just drop kicked me over the fence. I don’t mean to do it. My body just forces it out of me. It doesn’t even really help anything. But every bit of movement makes me emit an Ah, or an Ooh.

Today is a Tuesday. Bingo day was a few days ago. We have another trip tomorrow. A whole troop of us pensioners all jump onto the bus…well…not jump…more climb…but in any case, we make it onto the bus. It’s an enjoyable time for us, like an outing. We have a few laughs and a good time all in all. Have a good gossip about some of the other friends that we have, the missing ones usually. Not the dead ones, the ones that are absent, at home. There is always something to talk about. Someone’s son or granddaughter is getting married, divorced, having another baby. Plenty of news to learn. But it is always about someone else, never about us. Because we don’t really do much anymore, except go from this place to that, and then get ferried back again.

            My son should be coming to coming to visit me today. Arthur, the youngest of my kids. Even he’s ticking on in the years. he’ll be thirty one this November. The oldest, Faye, she’s just turned thirty nine in January. She doesn’t visit much anymore. Neither does Bill, the middle one. Both have their own families to worry about I suppose and they’ve moved away too far to make a visit something easy. Only Arthur comes around regularly. He just lives around the corner with his wife. No kids yet. Something to do with his wife’s ovaries. Well, that’s what he’s told me. If you ask me, he’s shooting blanks but won’t admit it. Always been a bit proud that one, like his mother, God rest her soul.