Home’s become a rehab unit

Nobody likes getting older, but like they say, it’s a damn sight better than the alternative.
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The boss and I have reached, or are about to reach, God willing, landmark birthdays featuring a number so large, I’m embarrassed to say it out loud.

Injuries that used to be shaken off 20 years ago with a few beers and 12 hours sleep, now hang around for months on end.

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Honestly, our lounge is like Man United’s treatment room most nights, the boss doing her leg-stretching exercises after one of our 40mph sighthound’s equally fast friends crashed into her knee back in February – it’s November tomorrow!

And then there’s yours truly, plodding through the TWENTY-TWO separate elbow, wrist, finger and shoulder stretches from the physio three times a day, after I smashed my left arm to bits in a cycling accident in July.

Our house sounds like a gruelling mixed doubles tennis final, played on the masters circuit to a largely empty arena with only students, the unemployed and the housebound watching on TV.

Grunts, groans, whinges and moans, as our once lithe bodies hit middle-age with all the grace of old giraffes skidding about on wet linoleum. The way we sprawl on the floor, legs pushed up against door frames, slowly; arms stretching off handles, taut ropes, rudimentary pulley systems and long bits of elastic - it’s like a sub-genre of geriatric pornography that nobody wants to see.

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And if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that money spent on overpriced CDs since the late 80s, when vinyl went out of fashion, was money down the drain.

The boss asked if I’d have a clear-out of the hundreds and hundreds of the things that were gathering dust, and maybe sell them on.

Daughter #2’s home from college for half-term, so, as a gesture of goodwill, I said if she scanned all the barcodes via the app on her phone and printed out the label, she could keep all the profits.

Guess what two huge bags of lovingly curated 90s and 00s CDs are worth today? £13 for the lot. I’d get more if I re-badged them as coasters. Now there’s an idea.

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