Will you still need me ... when I'm 84?

It was one of Mrs C’s counselling supervisors who asked her if one of her
clients was past her “sell-by date”…. a term which I thought was non-PC
for a supervisor to use, at the time. However, since then I started to
think about the elderly people I see wandering around the streets of
Nottingham.

Yes .. no … no … hmmm, very attractive 40 year old :) … yes … yes.

So what do I find off-putting / makes me think, “Oh no”.. and what do I
think about myself? And what do you think?

Someone who wear a patterned cardigan, like the old guy in the
Werther’s Original sweets advert … I wear an old fleece jacket at times,
which looks … well, I’ll leave you to finish off that sentence.

Someone using a zimmer frame or a shopping trolley.. I have one of these

Someone who shuffles along as if they could trip over any minute.
(Not me, yet)

Someone who dresses in a very dowdy manner with totally the wrong
sense of colour.

(Mrs C thinks I dress very badly … she and one of my nieces conspired
to get me a make-over on the Susannah and Trinny TV show … S took
some video film footage of me while I was leaning against the kitchen
sink, washing up one day … I was wearing my faded and baggy red
jumper, old trousers and black washing-up gloves (you know the ones
you use for clearing drains?) … and sent it off to the programme
producers.

Fortunately, they wrote back to S, saying I wasn’t suitable. Perhaps,
they thought I was a hopeless case , or perhaps they thought: “Hey,
what a cool dude ... leave him as he is”??)

Someone whose hair is badly dyed or cut (mine is greying, and Mrs C
cuts it very well)

Someone with nicotine-stained skin & teeth, .... and faggy breath
(oh, yuck, yuck).

Someone who takes out all their teeth at night (my false ones are still
attached)

Someone with the obvious signs of stroke-damage or confusion. (well I’m
not quite ga-ga yet, even though one of my granddaughters says I am).

But thinking about this, it will happen to us all one day … ageing …
... unless we drop off our perch with a heart attack.

We’ll have to adjust our thinking … move the goal-posts a little, don’t you
think, when all our teeth have to come out, or when we become frail?

Will you still need me .... will you still love me … when I’m ga-ga, doubly
incontinent, and fit for the scrap-heap?

Mrs C and I will be in Poland & Prague next week, so I'll blog again soon.