About time

I confess to having had two days of serious drinking and eating. If my liver and stomach were units of military organisation they would be adopting defensive positions and calling for reinforcements. Today had to be more sedate. Maybe not entirely healthy but at least a little more akin to a normal day of toast and vegetables.

I have reached a point in my life where it is very difficult to assess my functioning on any level. If I ache is it age or the onset of illness? If I am sad is it because existentially speaking the universe is a cold, heartless and pointless place, or because I’ve missed one too many doses of fluoxetine? Are my wildly fluctuating energy levels due to the aftermath of Covid or a byproduct of my ulcerative colitis?

Life is full of questions. It is like a very prolonged board game that you know you cannot win but from which you may derive some fleeting satisfaction and a place in the Grim Reaper’s Hall of Fame. "Hey you made it to 100. Congratulations, only 10% of people born in the same year as you make it to this age". Which is true if you were born in 1958, as I was, apparently. Someone born in 2011 has a one in four chance of making a century by contrast. At least those were the stats before the pandemic and Tory austerity screwed us over. Nothing in life is guaranteed (except death).

So a thoughtful Boxing Day. We watched Mark Gatis reimagining of The Amazing Mr Blunden with Simon Callow, which I really enjoyed. We drank tea and ate leftovers. We went for a walk and played a board game. And TSM and I stood on the local footbridge with a take away coffee and explored our childhood memories and explored old regrets. It was in that sense a bit Mr Blunden (but without the time travel and ghosts).

Apparently we are due some very mild weather for the last few days of this year. An extraordinary 17 degrees are possible. That really is weird …