I’m sitting here in the cafe of my Club, on the patio. I’m sipping latte, listening to light rain patter on the corrugated roofing, enjoying the cool breeze on my wrinkled skin. I’ve had a good swim and then spent too long in the jacuzzi and steam room. I love coming here, but its an infrequent treat these days. I quit the club just over a year ago. It’s a really nice club. Exclusive, with monthly fees to keep it so.
Every so often they run a deal. Come back and try us – ten days for a tenner, they plead. I oblige, and give them a very thorough try, every day for those ten days. Then I disappoint the member recruitment guy with a sob story. I’d love to come back! But now’s just not the right time. I’m in the middle of one of those ten day trials right now. I’m plotting a new sob story. I like to mix things up for them a bit.
Alas, I picked the wrong time to swim today. I descended the stairs to the pool to be greeted with the sight of a dozen or more folk in their very senior years. Most morbidly obese. The look of death hanging on their faces. They were taking up three quarters of the pool, ‘participating’ in an aqua class. An enthusiastic trainer rocked the moves from the pool’s edge, and the old folk pathetically creaked and groaned their way through the routine. Some nearly drowned.
Basically, I was confronted by a mass of well off, fat, wrinkled oldies desperately trying to extend their ever shortening life expectancy. Some looked to be making a better hash of it than others, but none of them looked good to see in the new year in a few months.
I swam. I jacuzzied. I steamed. I even had a quick roasting in the sauna. Now I sit here on the patio, pondering the fate of the world. And I can’t help but think that there’s a very simple solution to rocketing energy bills and the cost of living crisis. For pensioners anyway. Join a posh club like mine. Sure, it’s expensive. But wait till you see the gas and leccy bills in January. Posh club fees won’t seem so exorbitant then.
Roll out of your frozen bed first thing and get down here for opening time at 6am. Coffee, followed by yoga, followed by more coffee before lunch. There’s Pilates in the afternoon and maybe a brisk walk around part of the golf course. A swim and spa session in the evening with as much hot water in the shower as you want. Then dinner. Today’s special is a curry with naan and a drink for £10. Bargain! Come winter, it’ll cost more than that to power up a toaster.
Will anyone take my great advice? I suspect that most folk will turn out to have no imagination nor a sense of adventure and what will actually happen is that libraries and supermarket cafes will fill up with huddling oldies this winter, with a certain amount of overflow spilling into the morgue. Which is a shame. They’re going to miss out on that lively aqua class on Monday mornings with all the other ‘still-just-about-alive’ people…
The Mexile 
For years I was a skinnymalink but getting married changed all that. Recently I’ve decided to shave off that added girth and I can tell you that it’s an uphill battle. I don’t wish to enter those doting years in such a state either but sadly I don’t see myself getting back my svelte 28” waist any time soon although it would mean a new wardrobe!
Enjoy your freedom, your health especially and your club days. I’m glad I haven’t succumbed to life’s little treacheries, sometimes I get pinched nerves in my spine that are crippling and occasionally vertigo both of them are debilitating but weirdly the pain or the effort make me laugh and that gets me through.
So Gary enjoy your freedom, one day you will join us wrinklies in the pool. The warm water easing the stiffness of worn out joints trashed through years of driving golf balls across acres of grasslands or hauling groceries up six flights after the lift crapped out for the umpteenth time. Just joking of course as I’ve never done either however when I think of what I’ve put my own body through in my past nearly sixty plus years I’m amazed I’m still mobile 🙂
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Perhaps I sounded like I was being mean to old folk! For balance and impartiality, I’d like to report that yesterday evening, there was a whole bunch of lithe oldies who zipped past me doing their lengths. I think the issue with Aqua club, is that it exists for those folk for whom swimming a length of the pool is all a bit too much…
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How old are you? Definitely not as old as me, I’m sure. But, as the previous commenter warns… your days are certainly numbered. At nearly 70, I am more than a little shocked at the decline I’ve endured the past 2 years. It is quite unbelievable that just 5 years ago I was still at the peak of my life. A broken shoulder, a twisted knee and two years of lockdown have rendered me a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the creaky set. Do I exercise and watch what I eat? I do, as best as I can. However, it isn’t easy to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Think of a Limoges figurine… it doesn’t look quite as wonderful once it has been repaired following a tumble from the mantle piece, does it? . “Pride goeth before a fall,” my Dear. Aging is NOT for sisies..
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You do have a couple of decades on me, but I’ve gotten to the stage where I have gotten a taste of my own mortality. The virus that hit me in 2019 was painful. I sometimes drone on about it, but there’s perhaps one effect I don’t mention. It aged me. Put years on me, indeed. On the plus side, it forced me to quit smoking, so perhaps it has extended my life expectancy too.
I hit a big milestone in just a couple of months – the half century. I’ve already had a bitter taste of that. I had a lingering sore throat and earache after covid, so went to the doctor. Who sent me to hospital to have a camera shoved up my nose and down my throat to have a looky see. Because i tick the three big risk boxes. I’m male. I used to smoke. And I’m ‘as good as 50’.
Pft.
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I am so happy that you quit smoking… you’ve done the very best thing possible for your health. 50 does come as a bit of a shock, but there are even bigger numbers to come. At 50 I still ran 5-10 k Mon. – Fri. I did yoga twice a week and swam whenever I could. I had a busy full time job as international director at our college and I wrote my first book. That year I went with my husband to Europe and took my students to several destinations in Mexico. I also had two almost-grown kids and a husband to consider… At that time I never would have imagined that I would be where I am today. My knees went to hell and COVID also did a number on me. Through all this I have learned that I need to enjoy what I have each day. My husband still thinks I am gorgeous and his opinion is the one I care about. Life is what we make of it, but everyone has their own idea of what makes a good life. For me the love I give and receive back in spades is what matters most. Be gentle with yourself Gary… the future will unfold for you as it is meant to.
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Boy, that’s a scary image of those blimpy elders splashing in the pool, pretending to be exercising.
From the sounds of it, spending your entire days at the spa just as an economical way to stay warm sounds a trifle confining and ultimately boring.
I envy you in a way. Stew and I are about to embark on swimming classes because neither one of us knows how. I hope the pool is not filled with five-year-olds or obese elderly non swimmers.
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The current energy price cap means an average house pays just under £2,000 a year for energy. That’s double what it was last year. By spring it’s likely to be near £5,500. That’s about 50% of an old persons pension*. A grand for club membership for the year sounds a bargain to me. Boring? Yes, but less boring than a library. Confining? Yes, but less so than a coffin. But there is serious talk about setting up Warm Banks, to complement Food Banks.
But this is the current cost of fighting fascism. It’s a fought that needs to be fought, and won. It’ll be a tough few years. But things will work out, and they’ll work out better I hope. Your kin in Kyiv are still ok?
*which is why these costs will never actually end up directly on energy bills.
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