Old Before I Die

Of course I’d heard about that time of life when you start to notice that you can’t stand up, or even sit down, without a great expulsion of air – through your mouth I hasten to add– making a great “aaaahhh” sound. But I never thought much about it, assuming it would happen in many years time when I was coming back from the Post Office with my pension book and bag of boiled sweets to watch Countdown.

I do find, though, that I frequently make that “aaaaahh” sound like most blokes because it’s a guy’s thing, a way of telling the fairer sex that we are doing manly, strenuous things they couldn’t possibly understand. We guys like to be sympathised with as if we are superheroes who save the planet every day, and I’m told that even getting out of the shower and towelling myself I sound like a cross between a marathon runner and a whale’s blow hole, as if expelling air hard makes my wife aware just how manly I am.

But I’ve noticed that after a visit to the gym now I have started overdoing the gasping bit even when just sitting down, a bit like my grandparents used to do. I think I’m starting to fall apart.

Back home in Glasgow there’s a great Scottish expression for someone who is getting on a bit and suffering the aches and pains of older age. They’re called “fonty”, as in “fonty bits” (falling to bits).

So I have to admit to becoming a bit fonty now, as my various visits to sports injury clinics and MRI machines over the past year will testify. My big problem, of course, is that I think I’m still a teenager and that racing against gym instructors in running classes and trying to beat them is a good idea.

I recently had a medical and was told I had the heart and lungs of someone in their mid twenties but that the rest of my body looked like Rip Van Winkle, two hundred years after he’d woken up. All my running and five a side football has knackered my body and, even if they had the technology to make it good again, the makers of the million dollar man would be looking at rampant inflation to get near rebuilding me.

So this week, for the first time, I bought a Men’s Fitness magazine. To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed as the muscle laden hulk on the front in his gym shorts made me feel I was buying a soft porn mag for middle aged ladies. I fell for the promise of a six pack in six weeks but, having read the exercise regime needed, I feel I’ll have to meet them half way – a three pack in three years.

What really entertained me amongst the articles and vitamin supplement advice was the adverts, with lots of suggestions for treatments to restore my hair. Fortunately I’m not bald but, judging by this magazine, everyone else must be. The before and after photos are hilarious with deliberately depressed looking men showing their shiny heads in the “before” picture followed by them smiling, with make up on, and with road kill balanced on their heads in the “after”.

Another batch of adverts insisted they’d cure snoring, yet more dealt with flatulence, and one was headed The Male Menopause – Your Prostate And You. What had I wandered in to? I thought in was getting a fitness magazine but ended up reading about a lifestyle more suited to a comfy chair staring at a wall while the nice lady in an overall makes me a cup of tea before the Bingo starts.

Delving a bit deeper I did find an ad called Enhance Your Pulling Power. Thinking this would be a bit more vital and vibrant I read on to find it was a face mask for men which had to be pulled off after ten minutes to unblock my pores. I’m as willing to try new things as anyone but a face mask? It’s also blue, so there’s no way you could hide it when the pools man comes for his money or the neighbour drops by for a chat.

I don’t care about enlarged pores, ingrowing hair, revitalising creams, hormone supplements or tummy tucks. I just want to be me, and this feminisation of men’s magazines seems to me to be the first step on the slippery road to us macho types setting the hard drives to record Loose Women.

And then, of course, there are the pages devoted to improving men’s performance in the romantic entanglement area, if you get my drift. A man called Lee Murray, aged 29 and a stand up comedian we’re told, swears by something called Prelox. My first thought was “he’s having a laugh”, but then that’s his audience’s job. He says it has improved his love life, heart, blood pressure, cholesterol and confidence. It hasn’t improved his hair line though, as his photo shows it’s receding faster then the chances of me ever buying one of these magazines again.

So why can’t someone come up with a decent men’s health magazine that doesn’t make us feel old before our time? I’m guessing women must have loads of them but we men are forgotten about unless we’re bald, impotent, spotty fat people with nasal hair and flatulence.

Mind you, according to my wife, I’ve just bought the mag a year too early.