Retirement blog : More of the bad and the ugly, not sure about the good

Way back when, more or less at the time I started this retirement blog, I wrote that I would record my retirement, as it unfolded, citing the well-known film title, the good, the bad and the ugly. I realised, after a while, that this view of retirement was weighted towards the negative in a ratio of two to one, so I wrote on but somewhat wary of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, that’s probably not quite how these retirement blogs have turned out. Maybe more like 50 / 50 positive to negative. I’m not sure because I haven’t looked back and analysed them on this basis.

I think, however, that this particular blog leans towards the ugly. I say this because it’s about clumsiness. I wrote an early retirement blog about it a long time ago and things don’t seem to have changed. I won’t go over the essential tremors or the Parkinson’s stories. I don’t need them to be ugly. The incident that prompted this blog, last Thursday morning, comes more into the stupid irriot bracket, as that non PC comic, Benny Hill used to say. It did contain clumsiness but it was more than just that.

Let me explain. We were sitting at the breakfast table quietly enjoying our croissants – all four of us, the dogs love their croissants. I was being Mr Nice Guy giving the dogs the odd treat from my portion of croissants, but, as we know to be the case, being nice does not save you from the humiliations of life – like this one. We have a new Espresso machine. I have a top-up of my first cup of coffee. We have a machine and also one that heats the milk. I removed the top-up cup from the machine and turned half round to pour in a little more milk. My hands were sticky from putting too much butter on my croissants. I know the French think us unholy for putting butter and, in my case, jam (perhaps I deserve to be punished for these excesses), but there it is, that’s what I do.

So yes, sticky hands, and a circumference of the milk heater which is just slightly too large for my poor arthritic fingers to grasp. Predictably then I dropped the milk thing on to my cup of coffee and a full cup of coffee spilled all, and I mean all, over the sideboard / cupboard. Laugh? No, I did not nearly go to Bradford, in fact I was close to tears, so frustrated was I with my own stupidity. A stupidity coupled with physical short-comings that seems umbilically tied to getting old (getting??).

You see this was not the first time the bloody milk thingy had slipped from my buttery grasp with the same coffee spreading effect. Nope, I’d done exactly the same thing before, same result. Hence the tears just behind the eye balls. Mrs Summerhouse said later she thought I was going to cry. Don’t be ridiculous, I snapped.

So I’m sitting at the table, ‘admiring my stupidity’, with the coffee dripping on to the floor, kind of in a trance / daze when Mrs SH stepped in. She was taking control because I was sitting staring at the mess that I alone had created. She does things like that. Kindly moving me aside she proceeded to make me another cup of coffee to replace the one I had destroyed…

After a few minutes, she had knocked over the new cup of coffee which added to the increasing pool of coffee on cupboard and floor. I’m pretty sure she did not intend to do this but, from my point of view, it was fabulous. I laughed out loud, my nearly tears of sadness replaced by tears of joy. It was the best thing she could have done. Her language (all bad) also cheered me enormously.

Her explanation / rationale for what happened was somewhat different to mine. She said it was almost as if it wasn’t me (her) that did it, but another force. This is how yoga-teaching artists see the world I guess. If in doubt blame other-worldly factors. My immediate thoughts (about my spillage) were more down to earth – you stupid old f—–r. You’ve done it again.

It can be quite hard to ignore one’s increasing fallibility on the fine and gross motor fronts as one gets older because reminders are all too common. So back to the old dictum/s – look on the bright side or every cloud has its silver lining, that type of drivel. I’ll try, but right now, at the time of writing, I’m struggling to see a bright / silver side to this kind of clumsiness / stupidity. I’d be glad of any suggestions.

I think I’m right in saying that what must be avoided is defining oneself by these acts of clumsiness because, down that route, does lie the self-fulfilling prophecy. Nevertheless, it can be hard to remain clear-headed about one’s short-comings when the evidence is so strong. Events like the above happen on a regular, not to say daily basis, and no amount of precaution-taking seems to help.

So, for me then, there is only one guaranteed-to-help strategy, which is precisely what I’m doing right now. That is, writing as therapy or more simply getting a blog out of it. The number of times, over the course of the 600 + retirement blogs, that I’ve uttered these words – ah well it was crap (what happened), but at least I’ll get a blog out of it. I mean right now I’m wishing the whole coffee-spilling incident had been more dramatic, or at least longer in duration, so that I could get more words from it.

Alternatively, I could resist posting this retirement blog for a week* or so and, on the premise that more strife is only a heart-beat away, I’ll have more ‘inspiration’ (interesting choice of a word) for a longer blog. How’s that for positive re-framing? Would I go so far as to actually wish that something bad would happen so I have more to write about? Actually no, it might be some kind of fun to write about these things after the event but that doesn’t mean I enjoy these bloody confirmations of deterioration at the time of happening.

*Didn’t need to wait a week, the same day I dropped the coffee pot Mrs SH was taking to the charity shop, smashed it to pieces and once again I was trying to be helpful carrying stuff to the car. Hmm.

A couple of days later when we were packing the car for a trip, Mrs SH facilitated the grocery bag falling out of the car with the whole contents on the ground, cream spilled, eggs broken and so on. I thought of saying alright you’ve made your point but then I decided it would be best for me to help her clear up and say nowt. As I cleaned up I pondered once again upon old age and retirement. Marvellous.