Random thoughts at fifty-seven…

Today I am mainly being fifty-seven. I won’t go on about it. It’s just another birthday, not my 21^st or my 40^th, but a birthday nevertheless. I planned to retire at fifty-five (as I didn’t croak at forty as I thought I would for a while) and two years on I think I'm almost there. It takes a while to readjust, to realise that your day has come and gone and from hereon it’s all about learning to coast.

Yes, I’m still working my way through my life in my head, getting used to being semi-retired, still telling myself that I have something left to offer. I don’t know what that something is and I can’t jump across boulders these days, but there must be some of that boulder jumper somewhere. Yes, sometimes, it’s hard to see the seventeen year old me leaping from rock to rock to rescue a young girl who’d been cut off by the tide. Where were her parents anyway?

Fifty-seven, like the Heinz varieties. I can even remember Telstar. See, no memory problems here.

What was I saying? No, it’s gone. Well I am fifty-seven; aren’t I entitled to a few senior moments?
Oh well who gives a shit, just what am I going on about anyway?

Oh that was it. My day has come and gone.

Sometimes I think that if I could find a well of self-pity I'd drown myself in it. Not today though, today is my birthday.

Keep beating heart.