When I’m 64

 

I am 64. Today as it happens. It’s not something I’d shout from the rooftops. I don’t have to. Facebook does it for me and my many, many friends spread the word by sending me their best wishes. To you all, I say, Thank you.

My birthday got me thinking about the old Beatles’ number, When I’m 64, and how accurately it might apply to me. It doesn’t.

I fail almost from the word go. I lost my hair when I was 44, not 64. As will be evident from the above picture, most of my hair is a four-day growth of beard because I couldn’t be bothered shaving.

Does she need me, will she feed me? Of course she needs me. I’m the only one tall enough to get the fresh box of teabags off the top of the kitchen cupboard, and she does feed me. With my culinary skills, if she didn’t I’d have to eat out.

I draw the line at renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight. I’d rather hit the bars in downtown Benidorm or Playa de Las Americas. And Sunday morning rides are thing of the past. These days it’s after News at Ten with the lights out, and only then when there’s an X in the month.

We don’t have a problem with indicating precisely what you mean to say. There’s not many ways you can mistake, “You tight-fisted old bastard,” when you’ve just said no to her purchase of a combined microwave and fast breeder reactor. Similarly, she won’t lock the door if I’ve been out until quarter to three, because I don’t stay out until quarter to three. I tend to nod off around half past nine.

I know what she’d say if I suggested she knit a sweater by the fireside. Pretty much the same as I’d say if she asked me to weeding the garden.  Only two words, and one of those is “off.”

On the whole, I think Messrs Lennon & McCartney viewed 64 as old. I operate on the principle of you’re only as old as you feel.

Which roughly translated means, I’m 64 and I don’t feel a day over 90.