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.

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.