Then track the seasons through many years, and the man is manoeuvring his creaking parched self into a pair of trousers and wondering how he seems to have aged so much more than his wife who is still wiry-spry and steps out with a spring. He can’t muster much saliva any more and nobody told him that old age would be quite so dry, his skin, mouth and eyes – his nose with nothing much left to blow (he blows it anyway, all the time). What a stupefyingly ill-prepared thing his body is to dry up. Like a leaf, you might think, but a dry leaf falls from the branch and he isn’t ready to go. Gets up at
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