4304/17223
I find it hard to accept that I am a middle-aged man (incidentally this always promotes the comment that it’s unlikely I will live to 94, but I should point out to these pedants - who to be pedantic aren’t even good pedants because that comment comes from a misunderstanding of the facts - that middle-age is not meant to indicate the exact midpoint of your life [it would be hard to do that without the benefit of hindsight] but the middle part of your life. It’s clearly not even an exact third portion of your life as otherwise, on average you’d have to say if most people die at 75 then they would be middle aged from the ages of 25 to 50, hitting the exact centre of middle age at 37 and a half. In reality middle-age probably indicates the time between being about 45 and 70. So I am undeniably in middle-age, but only in the early stages of it, I would say. Though I guess if you wanted to divide life into equal portions you could broadly say that you are a child from 0-20, a young adult from 20-40, middle-aged from 40-60, old between 60-80 and properly old between 80-100. Even by that standard I am not even in the middle of being middle aged. When I am dead please feel free to work out when the exact centre of my life was. I think it’s likely to be somewhere covered by this blog {unless things go south for me pretty quickly} so then you can look at the entry for that day and say, “Ha, he was middle-aged on that dayâ€. Wouldn’t it be spooky [and brilliant] if it was today? And by the way my response to your exclamation, were I alive, would be, “You don’t even understand what the phrase middle-aged means, you idiot.â€).
But by any definition of the term (apart from the incorrect definition of it being the exact middle of your life, and even then possibly, see brackets above) I am middle-aged. And I think this holiday is proving it. I have always been a fan of puzzles and quizzes (though my fading memory means I am not as good at these as before - someone tweeted me to tell me I was in the audience of Joan Rivers’ Audience with tonight. It was recorded twenty odd years ago. I have no memory of being there or seeing this and they may have been mistaken. But if I was there, how could I have completely forgotten it), kakuros and sudokus. And stuff like Yahtzee and patience on my phone. I am actively looking forward to being old-aged (over 75 by my estimations) so that I can spend all day sitting on my arse doing puzzles. I mean, it’s pretty much how I spend my time now, but I feel guilty about it. Then doing puzzles will be my job. I will work hard for seven decades to earn my five years of solid puzzle doing, before my mind or body gives up the ghost. I can’t be certain but I think when we die and go to Heaven we will be judged on our crossword and/or trivia knowledge.
But the thing that has tipped me off to middle age so profoundly is that I am on holiday in Barbados and it’s usually quite sunny and always warm and there’s lots to do, not least just lying reading books by the pool, but I am increasingly spending my time inside. The other day as I walked through the games lounge to go to the loo I saw a half completed jigsaw on the table. I haven’t done a jigsaw for a while and I assumed that this was one that was just open to general use, started by some other guest who’d got a certain way with it before leaving it for future generations of visitors to complete. Most of the easy bits of the jigsaw were completed, but the bulk of the middle, a collection of houses with wooded trees behind was still empty. I had a little look at the puzzle, managed to find a couple of pieces, went to the loo and went back outside. But increasingly as I popped through this lounge I would stop and do a bit more of the jigsaw and today I was actively going into the lounge when I didn’t need to and doing more of the jigsaw, even sitting in a chair to pour over it. I have done a good half of the bit that was missing. And it feels good. Just ridiculously good. Like the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I would rather be doing the jigsaw than anything and my fear is that any time I am not doing the jigsaw someone else might be doing it. It’s an unfounded fear as everyone else is trying to enjoy their holiday (though I think one of the members of staff has a crafty go at it every now and again), but I can’t stop thinking about the jigsaw. To begin with I liked the idea of the evolution of the puzzle, that I would play a small part in something that would be finished by a future holidaymaker in a hundred holiday generations (or weeks), but now I want to complete it before I leave. Holidays should be about doing what you enjoy and I am really taking that on board this year as aside from the boat trip yesterday I am pretty determined to do NOTHING. But it does seem a little frivolous and wasteful, even by the standards of lying by a pool and reading, to be spending even 1% of my time in Barbados doing a jigsaw. But I am obsessed.
And what if I die before I am 75 and don’t get to have that precious five years of puzzling that I’ve been working up to my whole life. I should do a bit of puzzling to keep things going.
Anyway, I got some great bits into the jigsaw today and have connected the bottom to the top. I have two and a half more days to finish it. I think if I spend four hours a day on it then I should succeed. I hope the cleaners don’t decide to clear the whole thing away before I am done.
I didn’t just do a jigsaw today. I also read a book aimed at 8-12 year old girls So I am making full use of my time. And to be fair I should have read it before as it’s my wife’s third book, “My School Musical and Other Punishmentsâ€. I found it a bit childish for a 47 year old man (who likes doing jigsaws), but I may not be its target demographic. But it really made me laugh a lot (so maybe I am more childish than I think - surely not). I am very proud of my funny, clever wife. There’s three books in the series. You should buy them for any young people that you know, or yourself if you are quite childish. It’s more fun reading it when the author is sitting beside you and asking you what you’re laughing at every time you laugh, but I am sure we can arrange that for you for a small fee. The good news for me is that these books are so good that it can’t be long before my wife is the new JK Rowling and I can be a kept man and spend the rest of my life doing jigsaws. Imagine if I can retire before I am 50. I might be able to complete every jigsaw in the world. I could pay jigsaw professionals to do my jigsaws for me, meaning I could spend my retirement doing nothing at all.
