Senior Life

Welcome to a sunny South Manchester on day 350 of lockdown restrictions. I had my first Covid-19 vaccination this week and it was a piece of cake. I turned up 15 minutes early and was directed through the vaccination centre and, before I knew it, a nurse had me sitting down in a chair and a needle containing the Pfizer vaccination was plunged into my left arm. I then had to wait for 15 minutes before being unleashed back into the wild with, hopefully, my body starting to build its resistance to the coronavirus. 

I am therefore a very happy chap. Spring is in the air, the worst two months of the year are almost over, it’s warming up and we have a rough timetable back to normality in the UK. 

Let’s  answer some silly questions from Sunday Stealing. 

1. What is the farthest you have ever travelled?

Regular readers will know that I have travelled a lot in my life to various places including Europe, North America, South America, South Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Australia. The furthest I have travelled has to be Sydney, Sydney Australia. 

The distance between Manchester and Sydney is 10,560 miles as the crow flies. 

That’s a long way.

2. Who did you date while in high school?

I didn’t go to High School. I went to an all-boys grammar school and obviously that stifled my ability to get myself a date. Outside school, I was a short, spotty little git and I had no success with woman. Thankfully at the age or about 16 or 17 I started to grow and my spots disappeared and I managed to convince a young lady to go out with me for an entire year. I was still at school and I kept my romance and my schoolfriends apart. 

I often wonder what happened to her.

3. What is one of the worst trips you've ever taken? What went wrong?

Quite a few years ago, Mrs PM and I booked a trip to Thailand, the beautiful island of Koh Samui. Unfortunately, we messed up the timing of the trip because we didn’t realise that we would arrive and stay in the middle of the rainy season. 

It poured down from the day we arrived until the day that we left, with relentless thunderstorms pouring the entire contents of the Gulf of Thailand onto the island. I lost count of the number of times we took a chance to go for a walk and ended up looking as if we had dived fully clothed into the sea. The road outside our hotel was flooded and I waded across it to get into the hotel and seek sanctuary in the hotel room. We spent a lot of time in bars, as you can imagine in order to try to squeeze some enjoyment as we were deluged by apocalyptic thunderstorms. 

I have never been so relieved to board the plane home. 

I will go back one day – outside of the rainy season.

4. How do you like to spend a lazy day?

The lockdown has provided lots of lazy days in the past year. I will read, write, play computer games, listen to music, watch TV and play with the cats. 

5. How old were you when you found out that JFK had been assassinated? How did it affect you?

I was one year, one month and two weeks old. I was not affected by the assassination in the slightest. 

Since then, though, I have to admit to being intrigued about the conspiracy theories surrounding the murder. I particularly liked a book by Stephen King called 11/22/63 (or in UK terms 22/11/63 – I have never understood why Americans use that weird date format). In the book, a man discovers that he can go back in time and stop the assassination. It was a very good book that was also turned into a mini-series starring James Franco. 

I would recommend them both.

6. Who has been one of the most important people in your life?

There are loads of important people in my life. However, the most important is Mrs PM, of course. She is my soul mate.

7. What is one trait you would most like to improve in yourself?

Procrastination. I have been waging a war on this debilitating trait in my life for a few years now and I am actually winning, thanks to things like creating habits and using rewards to make sure that I deal with things in a timely manner. It does work and it is the kind of thing that I recommend that people try at the beginning of a new year. You can get into the habit of doing anything if you try and this is Captain Procrastinator’s worst enemy.

8. Did you date someone in college?

Well, I had a couple of dates but I was shy and useless. I did meet my future wife at university but we didn’t get together until after I had left. The marriage didn’t last, sadly, but that’s life, I guess. 

9. What was your dream car?

I have never had a dream car. I regard cars as a means to get me from A to B. Some are better than others but I regard them as an expensive luxury. I would never be tempted to by a super car or anything that costs more than my house. That said, I would like to have a go at driving such a car around a safe track.

10. Did you have a family member you wish you'd gotten to know better?

Not really. There are a few people on my mother’s side of the family that I didn’t really know, mainly her cousins and their kids. We rarely encountered each other to be honest.

11. Tell me about your greatest gardening success.   

I hate gardening with a passion. My dad was a very keen gardener and turned our back garden into a huge vegetable patch, which he then spent hours tending to and dragged me into helping him, even during the summer when my hay fever was at it’s worst. It is the one thing that I didn’t like about him, as he tried to turn me into the keen gardener that he was. He grew so many vegetables that we couldn’t eat them all and he ended up giving a load of them away to friends and family. 

I did have success because he used to get me to plant various things and then take over responsibility for nurturing them over the weeks. I can’t recall specifically what I grew, but it involved things like potatoes, onions, sprouts, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, parsnips, turnips, leeks etc.

I guess one of those. 

Now, Mrs PM enjoys doing a little gardening (flowers and plants as opposed to vegetables), which is fine by me. I have been known to help on the odd occasion that she needs some heavy lifting or digging – but I avoid it as much as I can.

12. What was your Dad like when you were a child?

My dad was amazing, apart from his love of gardening.

13. What is the best job you've ever had?

Actually, while I was at university, I was briefly a postman in between the terms and I really enjoyed it. It was quite satisfying strolling around the streets delivering letters and parcels. I still enjoy walking now and I think that if I were tempted to work again after I retire, I might consider it as a part time option if I get bored (which is unlikely).

14. What are your favourite songs?

I could write a book on this. But I will give you three examples of my current favourites:

15. If you could choose any talents to have, what would they be?

I would choose to be a good writer capable of writing a decent set of novels instead of churning out the nonsense you are reading right now. 

I would also choose to be able to play a guitar like Joe Satriani and keyboards like Jordan Rudess. I would also love to have the ability to write and sing decent songs.