Postcards From Across the Pond

It’s a bit early for a follow-up post, but I’m sure you are all lying awake at night worrying about my rat problem. So, I thought I would put a cap on that and then segue into what I want to write about, which is aging.

Short version:

It’s over. Everything is back to normal. Go back to sleep.

Long version followed by awkward segue:

Talking to the Rat Man was illuminating and affirming. Never having had a rat problem before, I was venturing into new territory, and yet I managed to make the proper decisions, and theorise the correct scenario, which was that the rat entered via the broken toilet pipe, was subsequently trapped in our flat, and gobbled down the poison until it finally killed him.

By the time I got the Rat Man on the phone, we’d had two Templeton-free days, and he confirmed my theories, claiming he was 100% certain that is what happened. So certain that he wouldn’t even bother coming over to have a look, nod his head and make appropriately encouraging noises, and charge me a few hundred quid for the privilege. He even, for free, solved the mystery of why Templeton hung around for so long after eating all the poison packets.

Health-and-Safety did not, as I supposed, make the poison non-effective. What they did was chemically adjust the poison to remain dormant for three or four days. The idea being, of course, if your toddler eats the sachet, you can still get to your yoga class and visit A&E the next day when you have a free slot in your schedule.

The takeaway is, I can still handle a new situation competently, and I can still crawl around the bathroom floor taking photos of broken pipes. And this confirms I am not yet on the cusp of Getting Old.

When I think about aging, I take solace in the fact that I still feel like I did in my forties, and I can still do everything I want to do. When I delve deeper, however, I am forced to admit this is not altogether true.

My hip did not ache in my forties (although, as I recall, my back did) and I could run to the Co-Op and back (let’s say I was short of ice cream) without needing to stop for a breather. And, although it is true I can still do everything I want to do, that’s mainly because I no longer want to go water-skiing, SCUBA diving, or party until 4:30am and get up at six o’clock to go to work. (That, despite what I insisted at the time, was never fun, but water skiing was a blast.) I don’t even want to see how many pull-ups I can do on the high bar in the park; I tried that once some years back and it fucking hurt.

Over the years, I have left many things behind that I can no longer do—the afore mentioned SCUBA, sleep contentedly on anything other than a comfy mattress, perform competitive-level Irish Step Dance, or entertain in pubs (that’s a young man’s game)—but I am content with the things I can still do. (What I tell anyone who comments on my ability to swim the entire length of the 25-metre pool underwater is: “I do it because I can, and I will do it until I can’t.”

The way I see it is this: I am on a plateau, I am unlikely to get better at anything, but as long as I can maintain where I am, I am happy, and comfortable, and definitely not on the cusp of Getting Old. But, although I can often fool myself that I am the same as I was in my forties, sometimes things happen that sting my confidence.

Such as the new bin.

We are, they tell us, getting a food waste bin to go with our recycle and general waste bins. When the Bin Men come, our recycle bin is often overflowing, and our general waste bin is typically only half full, and most of that is food waste—peelings, tea bags, coffee grounds, hoover droppings, compostable wine corks, etc. Once we get a food waste bin, we will have hardly any general waste, and without the organic waste mixed in, we can probably go two or three weeks without emptying it. And I find myself genuinely looking forward to this.

And none of those thoughts would have entered my mind during my forties. So maybe, in some ways, I am leaning toward a more, let’s say, middle-aged take on life. But at least I can still handle new challenges and correctly theorise based on scant evidence and life experience.

Such as: if Templeton was trapped in our flat, that means he is still here; he’s just not as lively. And this may soon become another unique problem I will have to deal with.