Category: Ageing

Avatar Why not indeed?

Well, let me tell you. What you’re really asking there is three questions. Firstly, why don’t I use trains more? Secondly, why didn’t you ask me sooner? Thirdly, what kind of lunch is the best lunch?

I only wish that I could use the train more because it provided fast and easy travel when I was mooching about in my 20s and 30s, especially when Reuben and I had the benefit of the family railcard. I’m currently trying to buy train tickets to London for a gig in November and they’re still not available when usually they’re released some months in advance. This doesn’t feel like they’re taking my mini-break very seriously and I for one will be sure to ram it up their junction should I get the chance!

You should have asked me sooner. I am always considering going to Leeds and very rarely get the chance to do so. Oh, you know what it’s like. Things get in the way and before you know it, there’s weeds to be plucked, cobwebs to be dusted or shopping to be done. Last night I insisted on putting time aside to press my trousers yet after doing the washing up, cleaning the kitchen and going out for a three mile run, it was after 11pm and there’s no chance of me using anything where there’s a risk of scalding myself when the light isn’t great and I have work in the morning. It’s just not happening.

The best kind of lunch is a hot lunch, one that’s dispensed from a lunch hatch with lots of meat and potatoes. They come in all different kinds these days. When I were a lad, you only got three kinds of meat: turkey (at Christmas), chicken (usually from the freezer, have you ever sucked a chicken?) and ham (full of water and slimy like a frog). All of this lamb ostrich alligator kangaroo burger nonsense is miles away from what I would consider to be a decent meal. If you can’t get a video… wait, that’s wrong. If you can’t get a hot lunch, a sandwich is a perfectly acceptable alternative providing you also have a bag of crisps and a drink to go along with it, and something sweet for afterwards. It seems as though most meal “deals” these days (if you can call them that) aren’t deals because for more money they give you less food and I’m not happy about that.

You meant Leeds Castle, right?

(Ian practising at being a rambling old codger).

Avatar Timer.exe

Here is a gift for you at the end of August.

Sometimes you have a rummage around to find something and you turn up another thing entirely. Recently I was looking through some old CDs I’d burned in the 2000s with backups and old pictures on them to find something, and found a little file I’d forgotten about. 

In about 2000, when I was supposed to be revising for my A-levels, there was a part of my revision where, for some reason, I needed to do something in a certain amount of time. I could do that by looking at a clock, but what would be much more productive, I decided, was halting all work on revision while I coded a small Windows application to count seconds and minutes. I am happy to embrace the very obvious fact that this says a huge amount about the person I was aged 16.

This was a terrible use of my time, and plainly an afternoon spent procrastinating instead of revising, and the program has only grown less relevant with the passage of time as smartphones have given us all sophisticated stopwatches with lap timers and other features in our pockets at all times. 

Still, the nice thing about it is that, 24 years on, it still works perfectly on any Windows PC, so if you need to time something in a very feature-limited and inconvenient way, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Timer.exe

Avatar “You can’t mack it, old timer”

This is what we used to say prior to attempting a jump in the video game ‘Driver’. You’d be flooring the accelerator, trying to make your car somehow leap over a truck the length of a swimming pool or some other ridiculous feat. The other person sat with you, because it was a communal thing, would look at what you were attempting and read the line. We were both 17 or 18 so it was funny because neither of us were old. Hilarious.

I have done a lot of ill-advised things. The list could probably run into twenty plus items, however I did a similar post covering this ground before, so we won’t go through that again. What I am trying to set up is the problematic approach when you decided to do too many things at the same time because that is always ill-advised.

I have moved into my new job but the induction and proper training doesn’t begin until the first week of September. I am also due to purchase a house shortly, meaning next month will be spent moving our possessions into the new house, researching carpets and paint colours, getting a new garage door installed, painting the downstairs and assembling the furniture etc. I know neither of you two have bought a house before but these are the kinds of jobs you will expect to complete.

A few days into joining my new team, getting to know everyone and watching how it functions, someone asked me if I had any interest in running and I said that I did. Indeed, it is the only “sport” (if you can call it that) that I seem to be good at and don’t mind doing twice a week. This then led to an invitation to joining the team charity event happening in September and, wanting to make a good first impression, I accepted. It was then that I realised that I had misinterpreted what was expected of me.

The blurb said that you had to run 100 miles over the course of September. I took this to mean that the 100 miles was split between however many people there were on the team, therefore the reason for asking me to join was to make more money for the charity and ease the burden on the other people doing the running. What it actually said though is that every participant has to run 100 miles. There is no sharing. That’s 100 miles over 30 days amounting to roughly 3.3 miles a day per person.

As a running potato, I have at best managed 2.5 miles with two days rest in-between and then another 2.5 miles. I now have a week in order to get better at running to somehow achieve this magnificent feat. What I want from you though is your cold, hard cash to help ease my September because I’m going to be busy every day and my sorry ass needs all the help it can get.

Ian’s Giving Page (cancerresearchuk.org)

I’ve already had several very generous donations so there’s no backing out, this is definitely happening. Time to chug my chutney and get out on the streets in my shorts and sweaty t-shirt.

Avatar Dangle a dongle

A dongle is a gay wooden jigsaw puzzle designed to hang on the wall.

It comes with your own initials carved out of it.

And you can choose whether you have a bird, cat, dog, Christmas tree, train or flower motif at the bottom.

Directions: use paper and an envelope. Enclose 80p for each letter of your initial or name.

Ask for: a dongle. State the initials and motif that you want.

Write to: Dept FSFK, Puzzleplex, Stubbs Walden, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN6 9BY

Avatar Proto-Papples

I’ve been digging around my old boxes of nonsense again because new content doesn’t find itself and bringing old things you’ve forgotten about back into the light is a good process. Right?

FYI, expect more of this over the next month or two.

This page was lurking at the front of one of the many notebooks I used to keep. It definitely wasn’t the genesis of the name ‘Papples’ because Chris and I definitely came up with that when I was visiting and we tossed off the idea of continuing the music making antics of The Office and recording an album. I must have been musing on the mythos, considering the chumblies and trying to develop a chart for people who didn’t quite understand.

It takes a while to comprehend both the genius of the name and the music of The Papples.

I’m not entirely sure why I was developing a gun of sorts to turn good apples to pap apples, then again I am an inventor so it must have come naturally (?). Let’s go with that.

Avatar 40 things

I am now 40. That’s fine. The joke is that everyone has a mid life crisis when they reach 40, that it means you’re “over the hill” and all that. I think 30 bothered me way more than 40 did. What I can’t deny, though, is that I am noticing the effects of getting that little bit older. 

Here are 40 things about being 40 that weren’t the case when I was 30.

  1. There’s several grey hairs on my chin. I suppose I’m old enough now to call these “whiskers”.
  2. There are also about five grey hairs on my temples. 
  3. When I trim my beard I also have to trim some small hairs growing out of my ears.
  4. I appreciate Redbush tea now.
  5. If I put my feet up, and leave them in the same position for too long, my heels hurt and I have to shift them around. 
  6. I can pull a muscle in my shoulder just by tying my shoelaces in a reckless position. 
  7. I can sense a cold coming on days in advance. 
  8. The level of mental arithmetic that my grandparents wanted me to have aged about 8 is very nearly mine. I reckon I could probably have a stab at my times tables now if I had to. 
  9. I can no longer run up three flights of stairs and then immediately hold a conversation. 
  10. The cleanliness of my car’s interior bothers me less, though that might be to do with owning a dog. 
  11. I listen to quite a lot of Radio 2. 
  12. I don’t mind hearing music I don’t like. I used to be very tribal about music and hate songs and bands that weren’t my taste. Now I don’t really care. 
  13. Eating an egg will have a noticeable effect on the speed of my digestive system for up to 24 hours. 
  14. I have moments of nostalgia for very ordinary things from my past, which sometimes are quite unexpected. 
  15. There are things I saw my dad doing when I was a child and he was 40, which I now involuntarily do myself.
  16. If I have to get up off the floor I need to put my hands on my knees to brace myself on the way up. 
  17. I give much less of a toss about whether or not people like me. 
  18. I feel much less need to make jokes about everything. 
  19. All my friends live a long way away. The nearest ones are an hour’s drive.
  20. I’m quite good at DIY now. I thought I was before, and would have said I was when I was 30. But now I actually am. 
  21. I appreciate early mornings more. I’m rarely awake for them, but when I am I like them.
  22. The fact that the lawn is mostly moss and buttercups genuinely annoys me. 
  23. I don’t care any more who knows about my hobbies and geeky interests. 
  24. If I don’t want to wake up stiff in every muscle in my body, I now need to consider warm up exercises before doing jobs in the house or garden. 
  25. I am working with people who were born when I was doing my A-levels. Some of our apprentices were born while I was at university. 
  26. I need to moisturise my hands every now and then to prevent them taking on the texture of sandpaper all over. 
  27. I own a pair of Birkenstocks. 
  28. Old people moving slowly are much less frustrating to me.
  29. The type of chair I sit on matters much more, and if I have a choice of chair I will give it careful thought.
  30. I can see the appeal of cricket. However, I don’t understand it or watch it any more than I did before.
  31. If I find an item of clothing or a pair of shoes I particularly like I’m quite likely to buy several of them, because finding something that suits you and fits well is not to be taken lightly, and you’ll be sad when it wears out.
  32. I prefer a regular hoodie to a zip-up one now. 
  33. I have developed better coping strategies for making small talk with other men who expect me to have a grasp of either football or sports cars.
  34. It’s no longer possible to switch to cider when I decide I’ve had enough of beer at the end of an evening, because the sugar will keep me awake all night.
  35. I’m more willing to have a go at new stuff. 
  36. I like Motown music.
  37. One very big meal will fill me up for the whole day, regardless what time I eat it.
  38. I’m much better at remembering to wear a hat when in the sun. 
  39. I have a dog now. 
  40. When I trim my beard and my ears I also have to do my nose hairs. 

Unchanged since I was 30:

  1. The 2012 Olympics were, I’m pretty sure, about two years ago.

Avatar Bringing order to the chaos

What do you mean you don’t want more boring, mundane posts about things done in and around my flat? Cheeky scamp! Wind your neck in.

For a very long time, my cutlery drawer was like the wild West: unruly, brutal, unfeeling and packed full of horses. I threw everything back in when it was clean and dry, not caring where it went. You would need to rummage round to find what you were looking for and there was no guarantee you’d find it / that it was hiding in there. I even still had teaspoons Reuben had individually wrapped up for a laugh a few Christmases ago lurking about, the red, white and green paper mocking me from the back of the drawer. What a shambles.

These days I’m a new man. I’ve got a fresh ‘chude. The organiser serves as both a solution to and a continuation of the same problem; everything is neatly organised… IF it can fit in the cutlery holder. Some of the longer knives don’t and have to loosely spam about in a second drawer on the other side of the kitchen.

I also still have a lot of spoons.

Avatar 1000

This is the thousandth post on the New Beans.

Here are some other things where I have racked up achievements in the thousands.

1000 days

I notched up my thousandth day on Sunday 1 February 1987. On the same day, Danielle Steele published her 21st novel, “Fine Things”, and the song I Knew You Were Waiting for Me by George Michael and Aretha Franklin was number 1 in the charts.

1000 weeks

My thousandth week began on Monday 7 July 2003, a day when I would almost certainly have been in a stuffy office on the top floor of the EC Stoner Building at the University of Leeds, filing away human resources files on staff pay adjustments. On my desk would have been a glass of squash, because I didn’t do hot drinks in those days, so I’d keep a bottle of squash in my desk drawer, and I had a red stripey glass to drink it from. Since I moved to university later that year the red stripey glass became my pen pot, and it still is now.

1000 geeky forum posts

I’ve been part of SABRE, the society for people who share my problem, for more than 23 years, and have made nearly 16,000 forum posts there.

My thousandth post was made on 17 August 2003. It says:

I fell today and may have sprained my right hand – suffice to say I’m typing this left handed, very slowly.

I’ll reply as soon as I can!

1000 comments

It took me two and a half years to clock up 1000 comments on the New Beans. My thousandth is this one from May 2016.

Is the Cromulet in north London? I don’t understand.

Chris5156, 13/05/2016 at 13:47