Older, Wiser, Fitter

This week I’ve become fixated with old age, the years when people will turn up to my birthday candle blow outs in firefighter costumes and the usual Hip Hooray will change to Hip Replacement. I know I’ll soon appreciate reading glasses more than beer glasses, get confused between prostrate and prostate, and be so keen on female company that The Spice Girls will start to seem fanciable.

Alright, so the latter is never going to happen and if it did it would have more to do with cataracts than anything else, but it can’t be long till Sporty Spice changes her name to Gently Exercising Spice, Ginger to Blue Rinse, Scary to Embarrassing Auntie and, with the others, get their bus passes whilst Posh invites Hello magazine to photograph her bunion operations and laments how the Girls’ popularity dropped quicker than her boobs.

The Spices have cut short their world tour citing family reasons, but I think it’s more to do with having too many late nights on tour and missing their Horlicks. The girls have stockpiled money for their old age and I wish them the best of luck when they get there as there will be precious few other benefits. I have come to the simple conclusion that the older you get, the older you get. There’s nothing else.

Forget the propaganda of Wiser, or More Comfortable, or Wealthier. Each day simply means another twenty four hours nearer the kind lady in the nursing home mashing up your dinner or helping you look for your teeth.

Many couples who are friends of ours have reached that stage of life where they are suddenly turning in to decrepit versions of the toy Daleks in Woolworths, those remote controlled models that are pre programmed with just five phrases. They repeat the same words to each other over and over again - I Loathe You, I Hate You, It’s Off, I’m Leaving, and I’m Back Again and it’s self evidently ironic that the older we get, the more childish and immature we seem to become. It is then a short leap to dribbling and filling our nappies.

Personally, I have no problem in admitting that I am 32 years old. I have no problem with that because it’s not true, but I do have a problem in recently feeling bound for the scrap heap. What has brought this to a head is that I have been told by a doctor to stop running.

Following pains in my knees after doing heavy, competitive running classes three times a week, my specialist looked at the MRI photos with a smile and told me I’m part of the gym bunny generation he’s seeing every day – those idiots who have devoted their spare time to running machines and weights and have, consequently, knackered their bodies.

My shock absorbers have gone and I’m failing fast. I’m told by the Sports Injury specialist that if I don’t give up running now my racehorse chassis will move from thoroughbred to donkey and I’ll end my days ground in to glue and dog food at the local abattoir.

I guess I should feel lucky as I am still allowed to do other exercise like rowing or swimming, but these have always seemed to me to be a bit pansy compared to running, football or rugby. However, some of my gym generation pals are not so fortunate. One of my 5-a-side football mates, Mike, has had to give up all fitness because he has had a hip replacement – at the age of forty two. Another pal who had an operation two weeks ago will get his hip replaced in Spring. He’s forty four.

So perhaps now you see why I’m fixated with old age this week. The Forty and Fifty Something generation, who were convinced that exercise was the way to a long and healthy old age, may have been right. Our hearts are healthier, our lungs bigger and our circulation better than most. It’s just that we’re going to have to be wheeled around in chairs to show all those things off. I always expected that “Limp” would be a condition I would encounter when I get to my Seventies but I had another part of my anatomy in mind.

So what can I do? I’m going to cheer myself by having a mid life crisis and will get my hair highlighted, buy a Porsche, become friends with Ashley Cole, get sick in cabs, do drugs and join a running club. I may not live for very long, but it’s a better way to go than drowning during a girly swim on my hundredth birthday.
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TV presenter Jeremy Beadle, who died last week, was a kind man. I first came across him when he called Radio Clyde and asked to speak to me. He said he’d been driving through Glasgow and had enjoyed my show. I walked ten feet tall for weeks after that.

We met up on a few social and work occasions and were together on a friend’s stag outing to Spain for a few days where he brought a whole suitcase full of practical jokes and gags. In restaurants each night he dropped tin cards that sounded like plates smashing, and it was very entertaining to watch waiters jump out of their skins.

He was a great big kid, which was apt as many, many children are alive today because of his tireless charity work. Unlike most of us he really did make a difference.