Age Old

Hello, dear reader!

It is, as has been noted in previous posts, a bit of a landmark for me and mine.

There are reasons to celebrate aplenty. Everything from big birthdays to wedding anniversaries and a lot of those occasions happen to fall in the month we are (fortunately for my bank account) coming to the end of.

And, my word, how it ages me.
Family Matters
It’s not just the overly busy social calendar (no less than two full blown family gatherings in the same number of weeks), although that has certainly added fuel to the fire.

No, I think more than that, and the insidious, creeping fatigue that MS can visit upon its sufferers (in this case me), this is a matter of perspective and comparison.

For instance, this weekend just gone saw me and the sainted Mrs (that's the extremely lovely Tina) head over to my native Leeds and the very same hotel we stayed at to celebrate my parent’s golden wedding anniversaries.

This time, the occasion was my youngest niece’s eighteenth birthday.

A Tall Order
Holly (for such is the birthday girl’s name), is a wonderful young lady, and I have been privileged to watch as she’s grown and bloomed into the person she is now. I’ve watched on as she transformed from the small pink blob of tears and bodily excretions we all start as to a generous, considerate young woman who probably should come equipped with her own stepladder (our family are, on the whole, freakishly tall, something that troubled the significantly shorter Tina as she joined them for a bit of Cha-Cha Slide-ing at the party). My own step-daughter, the very next day, turned twenty four. It’s less of a landmark, in the slightly arbitrary way these things are calculated, and I haven’t known her quite as long as Holly, but when I met her she was a precocious ten year old who suddenly became a paramedic and a houseowner, and how the hell did that happen?

And that’s what I find ages me. Not my own advancing years, or the big birthday looming on the ever-nearing horizon, but the people who surround me.

Relative Dimension
Age is a relative thing. When I was twenty, fifty seemed ancient. Now I’m nearing that age myself, seventy doesn’t seem like any age at all (as the recent death of a friend’s father has underlined). Time too seems to function in a different way. The fabled six week’s summer holiday from school seemed to stretch on forever, to the point you were almost desperate to get back. Nowadays three months slides by like it was never there. You blink and you’re a quarter way through the year. It’s like some weird rollercoaster ride that gathers speed as you go

Which is all very maudlin and a little bit pointless, but I’m in a reflective (and slightly MS weariness fuelled) mood and, as the recent spate of celebrations tapers off (for a while) I think it behoves us to reflect on this crazy thing we call life and remember that as the car accelerates more and ever more there’s still time to look out the window and enjoy the view (as long as you’re not driving, Tina Rankin).


Until next time…


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Hey, there! If you enjoyed reading any of the above, why not take a look at some of my published work? Below you’ll find links to a number of short stories I’m lucky enough to have included in anthologies. I’d love to know what you think


New Tales Of Old


Death Ship


Pestilence: Drabbles 1


Reaperman: Drabbles 3


The Musketeers Vs Cthulhu


Eldritch Investigations