Getting old and grey and full of sleep

Hey oldie! Yeah, you! You’re officially invited to a seminar on Entering Your Thirties, situated in a nicely ventilated room with easily accessible bathrooms and protein-based snacks. The event is meant to start on the hour, but we’re aware you might be a bit late, because leaving the house now involves something of a circuit course of “check the heater, check the stove, check the lights, check you’ve locked the front door, did you really check the stove, what about the oven, better double-check the door’s really locked, and maybe check the heater once more on your way out.”

So we can assume you’ll all be a little bit late from your circuit training. Let’s not forget the fact that the walk from tram stop to conference centre will take a bit longer this evening because you’ve forgotten to do your double leg calf raises, which are a necessity handed down to you by your venerated Physiotherapist, ever since you injured your overly mobile ankles during a particularly energetic bout of Jewish folk dancing.

We also welcome those of you who might want to Skype into this meeting, and we thank you for your searingly honest RSVPs explaining this choice. Some of our favourite responses were, “I work 9-5, in order to spent 5-9 away from humanity” and “if a bold and risky entrepreneur suggested installing a toilet and fridge inside the structure of a bed, I would singlehandedly make that entrepreneur a millionaire.”

Other regrets coming in are from the perkier and fitter members of our over-30s who tell us that they must exercise without pause between the hours of 5pm and 10pm in order to stave off the inevitable descent into decrepitude and calf-weakness that yawns and flashes ever-temptingly before them.

We hope those of you who are left – you, who missed her train on the Upfield line, and you, who wants to avoid his housemates’ marathon viewing of Four Weddings – find this seminar helpful. We will be covering such topics as:

“I didn’t know I even had that muscle until it started hurting”

“Why can’t I eat with the gusto I used to?”

“I need to tell more strangers more often what they’re doing incorrectly”

and our most popular topic, “No more caffeine after 4pm: a night-terrors and micturition tale”

We look forward to seeing you at this exciting event, and hearing your many interminable anecdotes. 

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