Utopiate

How likely is it, at our age, at this stage of life, that the best is yet to come?

Doesn't seem all that likely, does it. Although perhaps I am basing that on a bad combination of ageism and hunch.  Maybe we should interview some really old people, and see what they reckon.

But if the best has been and gone, is it worth bothering? Chasing dreams and following rainbows, wanting love and laughter, passion and adventure, is that crazy? Aren't we all supposed to be mellowing out by now, settling down with pipe and slippers and beginning in earnest the slow alcohol-blurred slide towards hazy blandness?

Well, I have news. I am still kicking.

It may be the final death-throes of my high spirit, but I am making an attempt to do some new stuff and refresh things. Because one thing I'm certain of is that the best of my life as it currently stands has been and gone. So I'd better go stand somewhere different.

How does this manifest itself? Well, the running, for a start. I'm up to 28 minutes a session now. Ponderously slow, but I can speed up as I get better.  I've signed up for an erotic fiction workshop, got another reading coming up and a poem coming out in an anthology next month. 

I am working with the Pet Poet on a new set of material which will include singing, dressing up and burlesque (yes, we're signing up to learn that too...) Boggling. I know. Our plan is a simple one: to develop a set of material to sell to festivals, then spend next summer lolling in tents and hobnobbing in the backstage areas of various muddy places.

I am thinking of signing up for some advanced driving lessons, and have two night-time sponsored walks coming up in the next two weeks. After that, walking plans include the Grand Union Canal, the Pilgrim's Way (with the Poet and a new set of Canterbury Tales written on the way), and then why not the Via Compostela, or the Appian Way?

Rage, rage against the dying of the light...