Retrospective (12 days to go…)
by Max Akroyd
I became 44 the other day. It’s surprisingly hard to take a day off when every day is a day off from doing things you don’t like. To achieve a complete contrast to the norm, I suppose I could have done my tax return… Instead, I made the pigs wait for breakfast a bit longer than usual, and I chatted to Emma slightly longer over coffee. But I spent a lot of my birthday happy in the shade of the tool shed, fixing my strimmer.
This mainly involved whacking the thing with a hammer and chisel (don’t ask) and thus represented the latest expression of our make do and mend philosophy. A few years ago I’d have taken it to an Authorised Person to service. The transformation of attitude and circumstance pleased me – along with a bit of annoyance about the amount of money I’d given to people in the past to do stuff I should have taken responsibility for…
Reverie about how much things had changed soon got me thinking (in a very middle-aged way) about how I’d ended up having a ragged, happy birthday in a toolshed in Brittany rather than the pre-ordained one: dejected in a suit in a bar in West Yorkshire. Why had my official life plan unravelled so absolutely?
At about 4 years old – my earliest memory – I fell into a bramble-filled ditch in Ireland. That’s a certain proximity to nature, I suppose, but not really the thread I’m trying to pick up! At 14 I was living in my parents’ dream house in Cumbria. It had a big garden and a little wood and, I think, woke up the notion of rural living as the highest form of existence. 24 marked the start of a decade lost to an accidental career. At 34 life was suddenly re-illuminated by the arrival of my first child. The jolting discrepancy between parental values and those of my job caused me to trade my coupé for a purple saloon and drive off into a sallow Yorkshire sunset.
A bit later, somewhere between and the nappy bucket and the allotment, the plan to come here was born. A confluence of instinctual rediscoveries – or something. It’s hard to know where purpose ends and retrospective justification begins, isn’t it? But I do know that strimmer is working just fine now.
What is it with you men and strimmers? Lovely Hubby’s strimmer died a death the other day…..’it’s okay I’ll fix it in a couple of weeks’ he said. In a couple of weeks your won’t see us or the farm for weeds. ‘Fix it now’ I said.
Hmmmmm….we’ll see who wins!
Your life course is an interesting one, it’s like you woke up to a new reality when parenthood struck. For me it was the reverse….stick to the ‘norm’ with the kids and then I woke up to a new reality much much later.
Now my kids think I’m mad….come to think of it most days SO DO I!!
12 days to go……woohoo!!
Sue xx
Hi Max
A belated Happy Birthday.
With me, I did not know what I wanted to do until children grown, and then I was bogged down with mortgage and too many bills.I knew that I would never be able to realise most of my dreams. So now I content myself to just dabbling in what I want to do.
I would not change that though as it was when I met my second husband that I could start to express myself and teach myself gardening and proper cooking.It’s because of him I was able to retire when I did and he encourages me to do the things that I want to do.Sorry rambling on a bit!
12 days…how exciting!
Mary x
Bon Anniversaire. 44! is that all? Man (!) has three phases: the first is where adulthood is somewhere in the future, and “who cares anyway”. The second (at 44) is when you stop and think about Life, the Universe and Everything( Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) and the last phase (me)is when you come to an acceptance of it all, chill out and drink wine.
Happy birthday Max. Now stop eating cake and get watering!