How fast can you guess these words?

1. F_ _K
2. PU_S_
3. S_X
4. P_N_S
5. BOO_S
6. _ _NDOM

Answers:

1. FORK
2. PULSE
3. SIX
4. PANTS
5. BOOKS
6. RANDOM

You got all 6 wrong….didn’t you?

Just recently, like the last 2-3 years, people have started telling me I look like Mick Jagger and with increasing frequency. Now I have to say I am not too sure if this is a good thing. Look at this….

I do have a few wrinkles but nothing like Sir Mick… One saving grace is that one or two women who have told me this have reacted to my disgust with the statement that Mick Jagger is sexy! Well, ok…. Guess I can live with it then….

Well, perhaps as might be expected, this last week has hardly been significantly different to the previous week. The coming and going of my 50th birthday could be likened to the coming of the dawn – inevitable but hardly surprising. I don’t feel any different but it feels different to say “I am 50″ so I have been saying it… over and over again just to get into the habit and the feel of it. Nope – nothing changed. I feel the same as I did at 18!

I’m now revisiting plans to have a birthday party as well. It will be my belated fiftieth birthday bash I guess.

People around me seem to have reacted to my turning 50 rather worse than I. It seems on reflection to have more significance to others than to I.

Life and loving goes on…. nothing is changed and everything seems the same. No doomsday.

My brother put it well. Think of being a cricketer and you just reached your half century on the way to that century. He added that when I make it, he hopes to be around to see it too….. so do I.

In fact, now I am wondering if I can hold out and finally get MY 5 minutes of fame as the world’s oldest man. Wouldn’t that be something?!

I woke up this morning to the realization that I am now 50.

That’s a half century and still not out!

Several people have now asked me what I want for my 50th birthday. I’m not at all sure. A lottery win would be quite nice but so too would simply be health and happiness. Or – 20-years off my age?!? But seriously, what do I want for my birthday? Cos its a special one I think I would prefer things I can keep – like a good watch or something. Certainly, I don’t want woolly socks or briefs or anything like that. OMG – I hope NO ONE buys me a fucking card that says 50 on it in big letters…. that would be a disaster. In fact, don’t send any cards please. None. I don’t want any cards.

Its official. I have a prostrate problem. But to add insult to injury the Doctor also found I have a groin hernia…. By the time I left said Doctors I was in agony. A finger up the bum is no fun especially when he decides to really push on that infected prostrate.

So let’s see…. prostrate problems, hernia and sinus infection so far this year…..

Lovely!

I’ve always thought of my memory a bit like I do a computer and recently I have decided I need to buy more RAM. I’m not sure whether its simply a process of aging or gathering wisdom that does this to us older folks(!) but I simply don’t have the memory I once had. I debate the reason because it seems to me that the more time you have on this planet the more crap their is to remember – peoples names, phone numbers, bank account numbers and worst of all bloody passwords.

In these days of online banking, ATM’s, social networking sites and so on it seems to me I have to come up with more and more bloody passwords. How the hell am I supposed to remember all those freaking passwords? eh? I ask you! I am sick and tired of trying three or four combinations before resorting to having the site send me a new one. But in order to obtain a new one I have to answer a lot of impertinent questions the answers to which also require me to use my memory. My social security number, my mother’s maiden name, and best of all, the name of my first pet! How the fuck am I supposed to remember the name of my firs pet? As I recall it was a goldfish but I don’t recall ever giving said fish a name.

So I don’t think my memory is failing no – I think it just has a limit and I’m pushing that limit.

The funny thing about memory is that, unlike a PC, you don’t actually know what is stored there. There doesn’t appear to be an index file. If there was, I guess we could delete stuff – those memories we’d rather not have like the time you puked at dinner with the in laws or didn’t quite make it to the bathroom on time! Instead, we are forced to carry all that crap with us wondering why the hell there doesn’t appear to be any room left to recall that you need to buy toilet roll on the way home and why you can recall the name of some B movie actor in a TV movie but not the name of your best friend’s wife.

So, on memory I’m convinced my memory is simply out of space. Dot. It’s not aging nope – just my memory is full. I have been around long enough to have a full memory. Ain’t that something?

Well – it’s here as inevitably as the arrival of winter – 2010.. Just 1 month to go to be a fifty something. Googling the term ‘fifty something’ , I was horrified to learn that in Canada there is a magazine devoted to us and our ?issues?. My God.

Just before Christmas, my partner, who I have long understood to have a beautifully malicious sense of humor, showed me a book while we were stood in a book store. For a moment, I really thought that she had found a book especially for me. It was called “Sex after Fifty”. WOW, now there’s a good read. It may even have a few erotic pictures in it too!  I thought. Well, this rather thick looking tome contained blank pages…….. You can imagine how my face and my friend down there fell when I say that this was not just a spoof book but the joke was aimed at me. Apparently there is NO sex after 50. At least according to this book. If I ever find the author I swear I will string them up by their penis or nipples (depending on their sex) – or both!!!

So – I guess I now have to disprove this book. There is sex after 50. There has to be. PLEASE….

Here are some ‘reviews’ from folks who have bought this book..

“To avoid any confusion, you must understand this is a “joke” book. I didn’t realize this when I bought it. It is perfect a gag gift for someone’s fiftieth birthday party, along with those black balloons!”

“When reading the cover and back you really think you are getting something sexy to read. The back says all you need to know and revolutionary findings. Open it and it is blank pages. I laughed so hard. Great gift.”

“This book is amazing. I recommend it as a gift for all your friends and family at their 50th birthday. Or if you’ve already missed that, buy it anyway. Even the slowest of readers will finish this book in record time.”

By the way, this empty book sells for more than $10 – What a bloody con!

I am trying to learn to ski. My partner is a wonderful and graceful skier but me… well. Lessons alongside 3-year old’s that have a better sense of balance and a much smaller distance to fall is embarrassing. Still I have little choice. I want to come down the slope with my partner and to do that I must forgo the embarrassment and learn.

Skiing looks like fun. You watch folks coming down the hill gracefully moving from side to side wiggling those hips and arriving at the bottom with a snowy flourish. Me? I can’t stand up, am totally out of breath all the time and spend most of my time on the hill on my ass. Oh well. There is the Apres Ski!!!