Robobob

 

Robobob

True, I have mentioned my age before but I wouldn't want you to think I'm obsessed with it. I am still mildly shocked at my answer when I'm asked how old I am and I'm always slightly worried that when I fill in my year of birth online the list will not scroll down far enough. Otherwise I don't give age much thought. No I'm not obsessed with it ...but I am increasingly confronted by it and not just when I look in the mirror!

A while back as preparation for an operation I had an appointment at the hospital and, among other things, a nurse, reading from a list asked me a whole lot of standard questions. The answer to nearly all of them was no, until she asked “Have you fallen down recently” to which I replied that I had. That seemed to relieve the boredom a bit. She registered some interest and a little concern. “How?” She asked. I explained that I had fallen while riding my mountain bike. Her facial expression and tone of voice changed to a mixture of surprise and disapproval. “At your age!” she exclaimed then passed rapidly on to the next question.

I'm still not sure if I should have been pleased or annoyed by this reaction.

Shortly after that hospital visit, while the Covid restrictions were more relaxed, we took a bike trip visiting friends just over the border in Germany on the way. Almost our only footsteps, tyre tracks if you like, in a foreign country this year. Even the Belgium border just down the road has often been closed. For overnight accomodation we used Vrienden op de Fiets (Cycle Friends) an organisation where hosts offer members bed & breakfast for a reasonable and fixed price.       

The E- bike, a power assisted bicycle that runs on batteries, was popular before the Corona crisis but now that many indoor activities and team sports have at times been discouraged, restricted or forbidden, sales have rocketed, especially but not exclusively among the grey-haired fraternity.  We saw plenty of other cyclists during this tour, mostly pensioners eager to escape lockdown, they all had E-bikes! Our hosts, therefore, were more than a little surprised when we arrived on our exclusively muscle powered machines, unplugged as I like to say. “We have E- bikes” they told us almost apologetically “but”, they  added in their defence, “you are much younger than us”. There were birthday cards on display all around the room. They had obviously just celebrated a 70^th birthday.          

We decided not to disillusion them!

So, back to the operation I mentioned earlier. It was nothing special or dramatic, at least not for the surgeons. For me it was more than a bit scary but it was one more step on the road to becoming fully bionic!                                                      

Now I don't know the exact demographics of my readership. When I started writing these columns the most readers were either under thirty or more than sixty years old. That has changed, the age range is now far wider and varied but I'm fairly sure that few, if any, are older than me. However my left hip was replaced four years ago, my right hip two years ago and the lens in my right eye just last month.

In other words, although I'm not obsessed by age, I would like to point out that bits of me are a whole lot younger than all of you!!!