Mid-month musings: You're only as old as you act

How to age badly...

You know you’ve reached the brow of the slippery slope to decrepitude when you can no longer remember numbers - whether they be passcodes, telephone numbers or PINs.

A while ago I was shopping in Waitrose [I’m not going to apologise, as it doesn’t happen often], and I reached the check-out counter, proud of myself for having remembered my Waitrose card and the carrier bags from the car.*  However, after my shopping had been packed into those bags and I’d scanned my Waitrose card, I tried to pay for the groceries with my contactless bank card, and unfortunately it was one of those random occasions when it decided it wanted me to do it the old-fashioned way, as a security check.

And that’s when, with a rapidly lengthening queue forming behind me, I realised I had completely forgotten my PIN.

            It had vanished from my head as if I’d had a Men In Black memory swipe. The harder I thought about it, the less I could remember it. I roughly knew the specific digits but couldn’t think of the order they came in. I vaguely recalled that one of them was used twice, but had no idea which one.

            I felt that hot, clammy feeling of embarrassment creeping up my neck as I explained to the assistant that it was a while since I’d used that card, and it was the only card I had on me. But, now, the four digits had slipped away into the ether and my mind became increasingly blank the more I tried to remember them.

            The assistant was very kind. She advised me to sit on a nearby bench and relax and the PIN might come back to me. She reassured me that there was no rush. In short, she treated me like a little old lady. I was 61 last week. It was mortifying. In the end, I had to ring P and ask him what my PIN was. He’s the only person who knows it, beside me. I realise you’re not supposed to share you PIN with anyone, but when you’ve got a brain like mine, what else can you do other than tattoo it on your wrist?

I’ve always been a bit scatterbrained, but what used to be vaguely charming when I was young and slim is now the sort of behaviour that makes people shake their head, roll their eyes, and wish they’d chosen another queue.

Debit cards seem to cause many people of my age problems. I’ve had my card swallowed by ATM machines on several occasions when I’ve been unable to remember my PIN, particularly since Covid as I rarely use cash these days. My friend, D, recently had her card sucked into a cash machine, and the apparently nice young man behind her in the queue was later discovered to have done something to the machine that enabled him to get her card back out, after she’d left, and he had photographed her PIN somehow so he could draw out £140 for himself! Fortunately, the bank reimbursed her, but if young people are now such smart arses that they can do this sort of thing, what hope is there for those of us who are just beginning to lose their minds? We can barely remember how to use an ATM, let alone be expected to recognise which apparently helpful young person is actually about to steal our cash.

I’m not the only one to experience embarrassing incidents in supermarkets either. In a recent shop in Sainsburys, The Master himself picked up a handbasket and proceeded up and down the aisles, shaking boxes of All-Bran, rummaging through the packs of boiled ham, comparing the prices of support stockings and checking out the display of Werther’s Originals. As he went along, he found the basket was becoming increasingly heavy and cumbersome, and eventually a kindly shop assistant pointed out to him that he had picked up not simply an individual basket, but the entire metal stand into which the baskets are placed when not in use. He was actually dragging the basket plus the stand round with him, wondering why the bloody thing felt so heavy…

Then there are the misunderstandings. For instance, my friend, B’s, husband recently fist-bumped an RAC man who was actually holding out his hand for the car keys

It doesn’t stop me thinking I can do stuff though. A couple of weeks ago, I bought two circular raised flower beds, made of metal, and when they arrived I thought it would be a great idea to assemble them and put them in the garden before P came home. It looked simple enough.

Unfortunately, not only were the instructions in the form of simplistic diagrams which assumed the assembler could fill in the large gaps using common sense, but I have cataracts in both eyes and the diagrams were very small so I could barely make out the detail. Anyway, it looked simple enough…

Firstly, I underestimated how heavy the four chunky sections of each circular bed would be. Each curved and corrugated section had to be screwed onto the next by means of four screws. The sections were large and heavy – at least for a five foot two inch fat woman with short arms and the beginning of arthritis in both hands – and sharp round the edges. My back was hurting, so I had the initial idea of sitting on the settee balancing the pieces on the large footstool P refers to as the ‘pouffe’, but it quickly became clear that there was no way I could hold two of these sections together AND screw in the screws with just two hands and one footstool. So I had to sit on the floor, which I find very difficult.

If my back hurts, there is a great deal of amusement to be had in watching me trying to get back to my feet from a seated position on the rug. It takes longer than you’d imagine. I have to get on all fours, shuffle painfully to the nearest stable piece of furniture [the ‘pouffe’ in this case], then try to use it to drag myself to my feet. It’s like watching Douglas Bader doing a gymnastics floor display. I’m not always like this, but if my back is playing up, let the entertainment begin! Guess how many times I had to get up from the floor that afternoon?  Once to get the scissors to open the packaging – once to get the screwdriver – once to get a knife to help fit the rubber edging on the top bare rim of each bed – once to get the sharper scissors in order to cut the rubber trim once I’d fixed it on one bed so I could use the rest for the second bed…

I fixed three sections of one bed together before I noticed that the sections had a protective plastic coating which had to be peeled off first, so I had to take them apart and peel off this coating. And it didn’t come off with the satisfying ease of those cellophane strips that cover your mobile phone screens when they’re new. Oh no, this was heavy-duty protective plastic, the sort that would kick sand in the face of new mobile phone protective plastic strips. It took ages to find the edge and longer to pull the plastic off – it wasn’t stuck with adhesive but it was hugging that painted metal like a child clinging to its mother. Pulling it off was brutal and exhausting, and took far longer than I expected. But at last it was done and I screwed the sections together again only to realise that I’d fitted half the screws on the wrong way round...

Throughout this whole process, the TV was broadcasting the apparently 24/7 US evangelical Christian programme that seems to be the default setting on our smart TV. It consists of a group of mostly elderly white men - though one or two highly-coiffured women sing songs - who either sing dreadful hymns or give long sermones, interspersed with some audience participation and quite a bit of hand-clapping. It goes on and on and on. I couldn’t find the remote control, and I couldn't easily switch it off so I tried to ignore one over-excited preacher who spent twenty minutes telling a story he claimed happened to someone in his own congregation but I’ve heard this same tale told by several other such preachers and they all claim it for their own. What I find both compelling and hysterically funny in roughly equal amounts is the style of these preachers – like the traders on Barnsley market that my sister used to adore when she was a child [“You get not one, not TWO, but SIX - that's right, my dear, SIX - FULL SETS OF CROCKERY for the knock-down price of £3.40 – Ladies and gentlemen, this is a ONE-TIME ONLY OFFER, and I am going home in ten minutes so I’m knocking another 50p off because you’ve been such a good audience…!”]. They have a weird delivery, which swoops up and down, changing tone, pitch, volume, pace and intensity at random moments, but particularly towards the end of sentences. And they are quite compelling, it has to be admitted.

By the time I’d assembled my two circular raised flower beds, I was feeling very proud of myself, and also ready to accept Jesus as my lord and saviour.

 

***

*Incidentally, one of these bags was a Marks & Spencers bag while the other was a Tesco one, which made me remember my mum-in-law’s belief that it is morally wrong to use another shop’s carriers for your shopping – she thinks it is somehow an insult to the shop you’re using and that they will be offended, or even that it is against the law and could get you arrested. What do you think about shopping bag etiquette?

***

Check-out Assistants in different supermarkets:

Waitrose: - ‘Hi, how are you today? Do you know you can get a free coffee from the machine near the door with your Waitrose card?’

 RESPONSE: a warm cheeriness in the customer’s heart as they take their shopping and walk away.

***

Marks and Spencers:   ‘Oh, I love those ready-to-cook chickens, don’t you? I think that’s what I’ll get for my tea tonight’, ‘Those almond biscuits are my favourites.’, ‘Oh, is that a new dessert? I’ve not seen that one before. It looks delicious. I’ll have to get one of those’

 RESPONSE: ‘Oh, piss off, you lying corporate lackey’

 ***

TESCO: ‘Hiya, love. Wanna bag?’

 RESPONSE: ‘Yes, please – I’ve got hundreds in the boot of my car but I never remember to bring any into the store!’

 ***

Aldi: dead-eyed stare.   

RESPONSE: avoid assistant’s eyes as you pack your shopping into a Tesco carrier bag.

 ***

Some other tales of what it's like to get older:

Devi

"We were golfing many years ago on holiday and, as we were about to tee-off, someone shouted across from another part of the course: 'I don't know, these retired people having all the time in the world to go golfing on weekdays...'

When we turned round to where the voice was coming from, they were on the next hole, but were looking straight at us. We hadn’t even reached early retirement age at that point!

"Recently, I had a day off work, and when I went in the next day a colleague told me that a customer had come in the day before and said he’d been given some information ‘by the old Asian woman...' (I have salt and pepper hair, but my face has no wrinkles yet and I was in my early 50's at the time). She said they told him they didn't know who he was referring to..."

RUTH

"My experience is definitely menopause-related - in the last week, I’ve left my phone in three different toilets. I keep it in my back pocket and take it out so it doesn’t fall in the toilet. 

'The first time was on the ferry to Belgium. I’d got as far as our table in the cafe when I realised I didn't have my phone, and my son’s fiancée woke up to see me sprinting back to the Ladies, desperately hoping no one had taken it! 

'The second time was when we were leaving my in-laws on Boxing Day. I had no recollection of even bringing my phone downstairs and my poor husband had to unpack the car he’d very carefully packed, as we hunted everywhere for it. He mentioned the toilet and I suddenly remembered where it was! 

'I did it again at my brother’s house and I’ve also spent a good hour over the course of the week, wandering around the house trying to work out where I’ve left it each time! 

'I am NOT enjoying brain fog…."

 

Ron

TRAIN BRAIN STRAIN [a true story]

Last May, my sister kindly gave me a lift from my elderly mother’s flat to Newcastle Central station.  John Dobson’s famous porte-cochere loomed up out of the gloom as I strode from the car towards platform 3 and the 16:36 back to Dunbar. 

A worried-looking woman standing next to me said to her husband:

‘It’s coming in from the Manors side.’

‘That’s unusual’ I said to her, ‘I wonder why that is?’

I assumed engineering works or something and thought no more about it.  Precisely at 16:34, an East Coast Main Line train hove into view, from the Manors side, and pulled up at Platform 3. The woman had been right.

‘Funny,’ I muttered to myself, ‘I was expecting Cross Country.’  Nevertheless, the odd ECML train did stop at Dunbar, so I clambered aboard regardless.  I managed to get a seat next to an American student.

At times like these, the aged person’s brain does not automatically register the obvious fact that something is very wrong.  I was halfway over the King Edward Bridge before I had the most awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

‘What train is this?’ I asked the American student.

‘It’s the London train.  I’m on board till Peterborrow,’ he replied.

‘Hell, I’m on the wrong train.’ 

I dashed along the corridor, through the first class and into the train office.  The elderly guard, who looked and moved like Private Godfrey from Dad’s Army, was dealing with an imbecile who wanted a single to Darlington and was thirty pence short. Eventually, with just three minutes to go until the train stopped at Durham, Private Godfrey advised me to get off there, cross under the permanent way and stand on the down platform awaiting the 18:18 to Edinburgh, which stops at Dunbar.

‘That’s 105 minutes I have to wait - is there nothing sooner?’

He shook his white head. 

I stepped off at Durham and saw a bus standing at a stop near a roundabout.  It was a little single-decker and it had ‘Newcastle’ on the front destination screen. 

‘How much?’ I asked the driver.

‘Four pounds.’

I paid up, sat down, and looked at the train timetable.  The 18:18 that Private Godfrey had been talking about was due in at Newcastle Central at 18:39.  It was now 16:50, so I had bags of time.  Durham is just 15 miles from Newcastle, so I guessed on a traffic-free Sunday afternoon that 40 minutes maximum would get me back to the City.

 

It was only when we seemed to be travelling in the opposite direction that alarm-bells started jangling gently in my befuddled brain.  We rolled into little Durham villages with strange-sounding names that I had never been to before - Framwellgate, Sacriston, Edmondsley, Craghead, and South Moor. After half an hour, we had reached Stanley. We pulled in at a fairly new bus station. The driver got out. A new driver, plump and silver-haired, got in.  For a long while, nothing happened.  I was becoming a little agitated. Eventually, I plucked up enough courage to speak to the plump driver.

‘How long are you staying here?’

‘Three minutes’ was the terse replay.

‘Is there a toilet in the bus station?’

‘Yes’.

‘Would you mind waiting till I use it?’

‘I don’t mind, but you’ll find it’s shut’. 

We rolled on and on – Annfield Plain, Catchgate, Dipton, Tanfield Lea, Tantobie, Lintz, Burnopfield.  I kept looking at my watch – minute after minute ticked by and we seemed to be no nearer Newcastle.

We eventually reached Gateshead and, as if by magic, the driver suddenly woke up and took off from the Metrocentre like Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari. He had the six of us left on the bus hanging onto the handrails for dear life.  To my delight, the final stop was only 300 yards from the Central station.  It was 18:28.  I had ten minutes to make my train.

I made it with three minutes to spare.

I never had any need to fret, but  had worried myself into a state of anxiety so chronic, I found I had unconsciously torn my train timetable in half. 

Whoever says that brain fade with ageing doesn’t exist and that letting the train take the strain is an abject fool, I say, and should be locked up immediately.