Catching up; or not

No, not yet Bugs.


Ghosts from another time, only one happy enough with his false teeth.

Getting back into bed after a bladder call the other night I remembered I had not set the alarm at bed time. As I now set it something about the feel of the switch disturbed me. The usual sensation of setting involved a double, no maybe a treble, click. It didn't feel right. Had I already set it? Was my recollection of not having set it false? Had I now unset it? Conscious now and thinking about what usually resided in the subconscious, I had a problem. The same as anyone who consciously wonders when drifting in a four wheel wet slide toward the kerb whether a drop a gear and increase acceleration in reverse lock to save the day, and perhaps a life, it was too late.

Nowhere in consciousness could I find a ready guide to 'Set Alarm' without resort to an examination that would involve light and glasses at the least, if not cold face washing and coffee. With abraded glasses and in eco light (have you noticed how those bulbs take ten minutes to reach full intensity) I made so little sense of the hieroglyphic symbols around the now worn and dust encrusted alarm switch that I began to wonder about the instruction manual and along with that my filing system. More than enough to spoil a night's sleep and I apologise in advance if it spoils yours.

While this may seem miniature in life's overall aggravations it is a significant signpost to the perils of ageing. Yes it's amusing that our elders do not text as fast as we do nor even completely understand the rules of this communication field but this is new technology and they are old and unlikely to outlive it. Did Jobs even taken arthritic hands into consideration during the invention of his I-phone? I doubt it.

Change is confusing. Take today's warning by my laundryman that his last working day before an unimaginable ten day break would be the twenty fourth. A hasty consultation with my watch established that today was the thirteenth and dim recollections of last night indicated that it was Monday. Why then the urgency of this message? Pencils and paper or a calendar might sort this out. What day was the twenty fourth? How would this fit to my work week? How many days or indeed numbers were there between thirteen and twenty four and how do they divide by seven? How quickly can panic overwhelm logic destroying any capacity for calculation? Now of course my panic is laughable, more my laundryman's problem than mine really, but at the time, well you needed to be there, or not.

I had planned a great treatise on this theme but now noticing your nodding agreement that could just as easily be another type of nodding, I shall leave it as enough said.