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One of the worst things about being a slightly unfit 55-year-old is that if I try to put on my underwear whilst standing up, it’s like I am taking part in a weightlifting competition. I have to work myself up and then throw my leg upwards, grunting and groaning at the exertion. The second leg is slightly easier, but still comes with a fear amount of noise and kerfuffle. Catie says it’s unnecessary, but she’s young and her limbs are limber, so she doesn’t know what it’s like. She said I should sit down, but would she tell an Olympic weight-lifter to sit down? Also it’s still difficult when sitting down.
I think really it’s just starting to dawn on her that she will soon be doing all this stuff for me. She was 27 when we got together and I was 40 and that didn’t feel like too much of a chasm, but she didn’t do the maths (relatively easy as it was) to realise that when she’s 47, I’ll be 60 and she will have 30 years of having to give me bed baths and change my nappies. Yes I plan to live to Grandpa Joe my last third of my life. Into bed at 60 - refusing to die until I’m 90, only getting out of bed for a visit to a chocolate factory, when I will suddenly accidentally reveal that I’ve been perfectly capable of dancing around and flying off into the ceiling on my own.
I must say that I was able to do the maths. I’ve been able to add 20 to numbers for ages. And I only pretended to fall in love with Catie for the free post-60 care. Mission accomplished. Oh wait, she’s left me. Damn.
I never thought it would come to this, not til I was 85 anyway. That putting on underwear would be a struggle. I still can’t understand why it’s so hard. I can walk, I can lift my legs, I can run 5km pretty easily. Why can’t I put on my pants without palaver?
The good news is that that’s probably 30 seconds of Oh Shit I’m 60 written now (though I think struggling to put your pants on might be a bit hack, so might have to do something to make it my own - maybe start the show with no bottoms on and then demonstrate how bad this has got). Though another four years could bring even more ridiculous challenges to my daily life that eclipse this bullshit. Never grow old readers. Oh, too late.
I made a bit of progress on my possible new stand up show today and did another run through at the Bill Murray tonight. It’s a good testing ground as the audience is made up of comedy fans who aren’t necessarily my fans, so I got an idea of what might work and what needed sharpening up or cutting down. If I am going to do the ball story as a show I think I have to make it a little bit more theatrical than just another telling of the story, perhaps hanging it on the relationship with my daughter over these months or maybe expanding it out into the necessity of removing toxic people/things from your life. It mostly went OK tonight, though I was mainly reading bits out (a couple of the routines are getting to the point where I can do them off book, which means I can start messing around with them and finding the gold) and I didn’t have Catie to warm them up! I don’t know if I am going to make this into a show that I tour or if this is just an exercise in getting me back into the stand-up arena (and when I say arena, I mean small clubs and modest theatres), but I enjoyed working on this today and the gig was a reasonable amount of fun for me. Thanks to everyone who came along.
Still four more shows at the Bill Murray in this run, next four Mondays at 8pm.
