Ageing

The price of life is the inevitability of getting old

In an intellectual sense one accepts that one is growing older, but days and months pass without any real appreciation of the fact, and then all of a sudden one is visited by a gamut of reminders. The last couple of weeks have added up to such a reminder.

I noticed in the last few months that I was moving towards the light to decipher small print and increasingly removing my glasses to read at my desk at home. Though I remain short sighted, my optimal focal point is just too far now to read comfortably with my distance glasses, so off I went to the optician in search of reading glasses.

Then last Monday my tooth started to ache. Toothache was nothing new, but it was a tooth on which I’d had a root canal operation several years ago, so it had to come out. The next step, my dentist tells me, is that I need to start with implant treatment in January to replace the teeth on my right side.

Fiddling with my glasses and nursing my aching tooth, I sat down the other evening to take my pills – against the pain, against high blood pressure and another to ease urination. To that I must add my vitamin supplements, of course.

When I get up from my desk in a minute I know I will have to stretch my legs, if I want to walk rather than hobble. So this weekend I am determined to do some exercise to slow down this inevitable process.