Old Lad

A journey through old age

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  • Stuff

    I am regularly told as I get older that I should undertake “Decluttering”. I take this to mean that I should get rid of what my family refer to as “Stuff”. Having lived in the house for 40 years there is a considerable amount of stuff about. We all have it and it seems to have some meaning for us. I remember though that when I worked as a GP I became quite philosophical about people’s belongings. Before I explain I need to digress for younger readers. I was of an era when GPs visited people in their own homes. Difficult to believe now I know, and we also got out of bed at night to visit them! What made me philosophical about “Stuff” was the occasions when I would be asked to go to a home where a person had just died. I would stand in the bedroom and look around and realise that the person’s belongings no longer meant anything, even though in life they were probably precious – a demonstration of the adage that “You can’t take it with you”

    There were occasions of wry humour at times. I still have a vivid memory of being called to a house late one night where an old man who lived alone had died. I was met by his two sisters, both in their seventies, who ushered me into the bedroom. As I did the necessary brief examination to confirm death, there was a whispered conversation at the foot of the bed. Eventually one of the sisters asked me if I could remove the brother’s false teeth. I explained that this was best left to the undertaker and wondered why they wanted them. The explanation was that they were brand new and one of the sisters felt that they might be a good replacement for hers! What you would now call recycling I suppose.

    As I get older my stuff feels more important largely I suppose because it is by way of a memory bank to the life I shared with my late wife. One of our traditions for example was when we travelled to foreign places (or some places in the UK)we would always try to buy a Christmas tree decoration. So each year when the tree was erected it became a visible reminder of travels and places. Interestingly we always found something distinctive even in the several Islamic countries that we visited.

    There is a scientific justification for hanging on to stuff as we get older, particularly if you want to preserve memory. The British Psychological Society recommends Reminiscence Therapy as an activity to deal with mental health problems such as Memory Loss, early Dementia or Depression. Reminiscence therapy is an activity which involves remembering and retelling memories from your past and events from your life aided by looking at materials from a particular time. So in a session of Reminiscence Therapy conversation can be about childhood, school days and work life, family holidays or events. It is thought to exercise the part of the brain concerned with memory and well being. And it is thought to give improved cognitive function and improved quality of life It is even recommended in the NICE guideline for the management of Dementia as an intervention to promote cognition and independence.

    There is of course a subtle difference between collecting stuff and hoarding. I have never been one for retaining string or brown paper from parcels, or ten years worth of old magazines. Although I do have a healthy collection of strong elastic bands dropped by the postman! Hoarding is about keeping hold of things “just in case it comes in useful” as my Gran used to say. Stuff has usually been actively acquired at a certain point in life. So I am hanging on to my “Stuff” – the pictures, the trinkets, the ceramics etc. as a preventive health measure as the Old Age journey continues. Yes I can declutter some things – a good place to start is probably the “man drawer” full of old phone chargers, USB cables and sundry earphones. And now that we stream a lot of entertainment I probably don’t need all the DVDs or for that matter a DVD player, which looks like it will be going the way of VHS video recorders. But most of my Stuff is a comfort blanket. Although I know that full well when I am no more my children will be on the phone to the local house clearance experts! Hang on to your “Stuff”.

  • Whisky

    I never used to like whisky. My only experience of it when a child was as a relief for toothache. Hold a piece of cotton wool soaked in whisky against the offending tooth to deaden the pain. But the taste – ugh! This of course was one of my Gran’s remedies. Growing up in the 1950s alcohol was a rare thing to have in the house and usually only at Christmas. My Gran would buy a bottle of sherry, a bottle of port and a bottle of whisky, and it was not unusual for these to last virtually until next Christmas. And wine had not yet been invented!

    So now in my seventies I like whisky particularly single malts. The whole whisky experience is surrounded by hype and marketing but there is still something mystical about the whole process of making whisky and obtaining the subtle differences in flavours. As the years have gone by I have learnt to distinguish tastes by the variety of casks the spirit has been matured in, the effect of peat smoke in the roasting of he barley. I have a bottle in front of me (Aberlour 12 year old as it happens) and on the bottle it says that it has been matured in American Oak and sherry casks and is rich and citrusy. Other bottles describe flavours of vanilla or baked fruit and the taste of the sea. But I struggle to experience some of these. Which is a good lead into one of the features of becoming an Old Lad – the fact that the sense of taste changes with age.

    Like many people I experienced Covid but didn’t have the loss of sense of smell or taste. But I do find that many things I once enjoyed now appear bland and uninteresting. I liked avocados but now the trendy snack of “Smashed avocado on Sourdough toast” (Why smashed and not mashed by the way) is pretty tasteless. I need stronger tasting cheeses and have climbed up the ladder of cheddars from farmhouse to extra mature. I was out for dinner recently and decided to go for the Sunday Roast as an option. On the plate when it came was roast beef, roast and mash potatoes, roasted carrots and roasted parsnips together with a Yorkshire Pudding. Not only was it a beige meal, tome it tasted like a beige meal.

    There is a reason for this. According to the Medline Plus encyclopaedia we have about 10,000 taste buds. These are programmed to sense sweet, salty, sour, bitter and a flavour called Unami – a taste linked with foods containing glutamate as in MSG used in Chinese cuisine. The number of tastebuds decreases as we age but from the age of 60 each individual taste bud shrinks. So sensitivity to the five tastes begins to decline. Ageing is also accompanied by decreased saliva production which also affects taste, as does a decline in the sense of smell. And we know that the ability to enjoy the taste of a food or drink is influenced by its smell as well.

    So when I was younger I suppose my palate could not take the relatively strong flavour of whisky but now like the spirit in the barrel my palate has matured and can tolerate and even enjoy the flavour of a good malt. So that’s all good then. The future looks like a life of Venison, strong cheeses, robust wines and beers and favourite whiskeys. This getting older could be worse!

  • Bladders

    As the journey into old age progresses its natural to think of all the things that can go wrong. Most people worry about major events like heart attacks and strokes. We can take precautions to prevent these but they are events that are often out of our hands. Day to day of course we notice odd aches and pains, a sense of not being quite as fit as before and things that once were easy aren’t any more. A wise GP of my acquaintance used to tell his patients -“Its just the newness wearing off”! However the one thing that inevitably dominates getting older is bladder function. Its a problem for men and women alike but I can only speak from a male point of view. And in subtle ways it begins to influence what we do and how we plan our lives. And its irksome!

    The first inkling I had that this bladder thing was upon me was the need to visit the bathroom once or twice a night. And sometimes it became 3 times. Its at this stage you realise what a significant advance en -suite bathrooms have become. A far cry from my childhood when the answer to a nocturnal urge to pee might well have been a chamber pot! (we did in fact have indoor bathroom facilities so were considered posh) Nothing that you do seems to affect this – restricting drinking in the evenings, restricting what you drink, its all of no avail. There are two physiological reasons behind these night time episodes. Firstly the body regulates its fluid balance via a hormone called ant-diuretic hormone (ADH) which tells the kidneys when to produce urine. Normally if you are drinking a lot through the day the ADH level will fall, and if you become dehydrated the ADH level goes up telling the kidneys to reduce urine output. Normally at night the ADH level will be higher so you don’t wee. However as we get older we produce less ADH and so through the night the kidneys produce more urine. The second problem is that wen we lie down the blood flow to the kidneys increases and this causes more urine to be produced. So getting up through the night is the new normal and the depressing fact is that there is not much you can do about it! So forget a camping holiday unless you don’t mind the rigmarole of getting out of your sleeping bag and wandering across a field to the toilet block. Holidays in hotels or guest houses are nowadays not a problem since the en-suite is usually the norm. Better than the good old days of shared bathrooms.

    Gradually the bladder begins to make its presence felt through the day. And in subtle ways begins to direct how we plan our lives not least in the way that we begin to take an interest in toilet facilities! Train travel begins to be a better option that coach travel. Being “caught short” is always at the back of your mind. This of course is not helped by the steady decline in public toilets. Its a salutary fact that in the last decade 50% of public toilets have been closed by local authorities. As we oldies are increasing in number there needs to be a radical rethink about public policy on facilities. And the stern warning posted in pubs and shops that “These toilets are for the use of customers only” doesn’t help. I can’t be the only person who in desperation has gone into a pub and bought a lemonade simply to be able to use the toilet! Perhaps we need a law similar to other European Countries that allows compels bars and cafes to make their facilities available toall

    Medically our options are limited. True there are certain conditions like Prostate enlargement or Irritable bladder syndrome that can be helped by medication but sadly in the majority of cases your bladder will change the way you behave Be prepared! A last plea to those who operate trains and planes – please avoid your facilities being “Out of Order”. Perhaps as well as punctuality league tables we should have data on how often toilet facilities are working – and refunds if they aren’t.

  • Experimenting

    Experimenting

    Finding my way around wordpress……new blog post coming soon.