I’ve got to face the facts. I’m old.

I’m not getting old. I simply somehow got old.

And to be honest I don’t like it very much.

This is my first blog post of the year for ZmG and, I don’t know about you, but the first post of a new year always feels like a hard one to get out, as the actress said to the Bishop. It’s like the Christmas break robs you of inspiration, makes you hypercritical of your abilities, and you sit and question whether to ever put fingers to keyboard again. Surely a New Year should invigorate and enthusiate us? Yes I know I made up enthusiate. The New Year is a blank page upon which we can write the first chapter of our new shiny and sexy future, inspiring us to open our minds to new challenges, make us fearless in our desire to conquer our fears, and make us resolute in our resolutions to increase, lose or improve whatever it is we want to increase, lose or improve about ourselves.

Happy New Year by the way, and I hope that 2016 brings you all you wish for and more. For me it seems to have brought a sudden and urgent need to get up and go to the toilet three times a night. Proof if proof be needed that I’m now old.

Hangovers now take weeks to get over. In fact I now drink a lot less to avoid hangovers at all costs. Mind you it isn’t that hard for me to drink less as I used to drink way too much, according to those pesky new government guidelines, but it’s a sad state of affairs when you think you can’t have a drink OF WATER after 10pm otherwise you’ll be up at 1am, 2am and 3.30am needing the loo.

Being a three times a night man used to mean something very different.

As I said, I’m getting old. Some mornings I wake up grumpy. And other mornings I let her lie in.

Apologies, an old joke, but one to lighten the mood as we move onto the subject of death.

Maybe I’m thinking about age this week because David Bowie died on Monday at the age of 69, and it suddenly seems like the people around us as we grew up are now dying. Christ, I bet even the Spice Girls rang up for a GP appointment on Monday.

It’s natural to reflect, I think, it also being a New Year, and as I do so, I look back at some significant figures in my life and realise how none of them actually reached 69. My father died at the age of 63, my maternal grandfather died at the age of 63. My mum died at the age of 63.

What is it about the number 63 and our family?

So, if I’m to stand a fighting chance of beating their records and living to a decent age like my maternal grandmother, I need to up the ante. Now before you all tell me I need to stop eating crap and get more exercise, I’ve stopped eating crap and I AM getting more exercise.  I have a gym membership and I go, often, even though I’m terribly frightened by the amount of men wandering around the changing room in the nude. I don’t know if they do this as an Alpha Male thing, marking their territory, or if they do it to show off some of the largest penises in Christendom. I was getting changed one day and out of the corner of my eye I could’ve sworn there was a man walking around with a hoover.

Anyhow, I digress. Gym, exercise, healthy eating and I’m also back to running. I used to run a lot when I lived alone, to stretch the muscles and sinews but also to sort out my mind and my depression but backache, biscuits and a happier outlook on Life got in the way and I stopped. Now I’m crawling back to fitness, running is something I can do again, and the other day I ran for over half an hour for the first time in over a year, and thankfully things seemed, if not stretched and eased, then stretchier and easier.

I thought, as I ran through the mean streets of South Yorkshire, this is going to make a difference. I’ll live past 63, 73, 83 even! In my mind’s eye I could see my children with children of their own, and me the proudest grandparent in the world.

Mind you if I make any more jokes about my partner like the ‘grumpy’ one earlier I may not live to see 53.

Sod this I thought, I’m running, I’m smiling, I’m feeling fit and healthy and I’m gonna live WAY past sixty fucking THREE.

Only for me to be very nearly very killed by a car which didn’t indicate as I ran across the road.

Life has a cruel sense of humour.

Some say with age comes wisdom and experience. I say it comes with tendonitis and a weakening bladder. What has age and the ceaseless march of time brought you? Please let us know in the comments section.

Oh, and as always, thanks for reading.

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