Well, here I am sitting in the glorious sunshine in our back garden having a spot of brunch in a bid to fend off the ‘pre lunch energy crash’ that I’ve been experiencing a lot recently (probably due to the nightly Heinekens (I bought four cans for the slugs and drank three myself (these days the slugs in my garden have two choices: salt or beer; some of them wisely choose the beer))))
I haven’t done much gardening of late and I’m not sure why. They say, “Spend time not money on your <insert valuable thing here>” and I haven’t been doing much of that at all. Sunday mornings were traditionally my gardening time but to be honest I haven’t been bothered. I’ve planted the spuds but the brassica and legumes patches lie empty. I guess I could move the broad bean saplings to the outside now we’ve hopefully seen the last of the frost. Why has my gardening spirit deserted me? I still don’t really know what brassicas are, but I have a feeling I don’t like them. Are they the green leafy veg like kale and Brussels sprouts? Sounds like ideal food for slugs to enjoy with beer and salt.
I read an article in last week’s Times Magazine by Rachel Riley of Countdown fame (she’s now 35!) and she said some of the best advice she’d ever received was: Decide what would be a good outcome of a project and if you achieve that, be happy with it. She also wrote: Only concern yourself with what will be important in five years’ time.
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| Rachel Riley in 2011. Source : Wikipedia CC by 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ |
This got me to thinking. Where will I be in five years’ time? What will be important to us then?
Well, I’ll be 51. I can’t even relax enough to imagine what that will be like. Probably just be exactly the same as now, except hopefully we’ll be closer to paying off the mortgage. Too much time wasted on social media. Failed half-empty writing promises. Not enough money. Unachieved goals.
I remember in 2008 I wrote a five year plan and it involved becoming self sufficient. IE we’d own our own house, have our own homestay business. Teach English at home and tour people around Scotland. Sounded like a pretty good goal.
And to some extent we approached this. We had guests coming in with AirBnB and Homestay. We had a refreshing home. People came and went. They stayed in the spare room. We even had a lodger at one point. Admittedly the first night was always a bit nervy because we never knew if they’d kill us all in our sleep, but after that didn’t happen it was fine.
I mean we could grow more food, it’s just a case of me being arsed.
The dandelions are out in full force today, and so are daisies on the lawn. I’ve put fatballs in the bird feeder and the house sparrows are tweeting merrily. Currently no neighbours are playing radios or shouting at dogs. Things seem momentarily peaceful. In the distance someone’s mowing their lawn and dogs are barking their indifference at each other, but that’s at a distance so completely fine. No fitness company is shouting orders via a PA system at their clients, which even at a distance is insufferable.
It seems I’ve become a cantankerous old man, which must have snuck up on me in the last five years...
So back to Rachel Riley. Where do I want to be in 2026, because there’s a fair to middling chance that it will come around eventually.
I don’t want to be 51 - that’s a start. That’s the main one. I'd rather be 25.5. But that’s ridiculous. I’m going to be 51 whether I like it or not. The question is, what kind of 51-year-old do I want to be?
Looking at people younger than me lamenting their age I always think, “Hmm, they should just be grateful for what they have.” So perhaps that’s how I should be. Grateful for what I have. I should be grateful for being 51 because five years after that I’ll be 56. More pain. More hardship. Further from the truth. Or closer, depending on how you look at it.
Okay, can’t do anything about that, but I can presumably do something about my situation. Me and my books and my writing and my wedding videos and my car and my music. I want to be an ageing hippy, smoking dope and giving lectures. And my dog. I want to enjoy the twilight years of my life.
I want to live in a small house near the sea in St Andrews, with a garden in a quiet place.
And all I’d need to do that is £135 grand...
Better get writing!
