Acceptance

To my mind, Lockdown is an instruction to relax on the sofa watching movies and eating meals delivered by Deliveroo for several months. Mrs P has seen it as an opportunity to launch into a cleaning and clearing frenzy. She’s tearing through each room, one by one, like a Tasmanian devil. Every couple of days, I find a bunch of bags with trash that need to be taken out to the communal bins. Taking out the trash is and always has been my job.

The bathroom cupboards are latest to be cleansed of junk. To both my surprise and my delight, todays bags included the unopened box of Just For Men that has been sitting under the sink for the last four years. It started off at the front of the cupboard, in anticipation of imminent use. Over the years it has inched backwards, till it found its place in the furthest, darkest corner of the cupboard.

Mrs P has long believed that I’m too young to have grey hair. I disagree. Not only am I not too young to have grey hair, the time when I was too young belongs in an entirely different century. Still, Mrs P is a lady and must have her way. So the box of hair dye was purchased. And I am I bloke and blokes tend to do things tomorrow. Worse still for Mrs P, I am a bloke with a Mexican streak in him. So I tend to do things mañana. Which means never.

I long ago accepted that I am getting older and that part of that process means an ever increasing number of grey hairs. And Mrs P has finally accepted – thank goodness – that I’m really not going to start dying my hair at this stage in life. Not even during lockdown.