Elderly people.

by Phil Seaman.

I would apologise for the slightly preachy tone of this piece, but quite frankly I don't care enough to do so.

How many times do you hear an old person say 'Now I'm retired, I'm going to do what I've always wanted to do.' I feel I should make it aware that this annoys me. Maybe I have been spending too much time around the elderly, but there are usually a few things that most people want to do when they stagger into their Indian Sunset.

Gardening

They may want to start gardening, although the cowboy tree removal company 'J.D. Roland & Son' has already taken most of your money, torn up your lawn and cut down all your (perfectly healthy) trees. You may as well concrete over the garden - if only to annoy your relatives. After all, every penny you spend whilst alive is a penny less for their inheritance. Since they are probably just waiting for you to croak anyway, why not piss them off a bit longer and call up J.D. Roland & Son (who also, bizarrely, do concrete jobs - must be talented people, they're in every section of the Yellow Pages) and spend all the inheritance money - it will probably decrease the value of the house as well! Double winner. At least then people would actually mourn at your funeral, even it is just for the money. So gardening - not really for me.

Have a bit of a rest

Another thing the soon to be retired seem to want to do is 'put their feet up'. This appears to be old person slang for 'waiting for the reaper'. Surely it is better to live your remaining years with a smile on your face, maybe with a pina colada in your hand on Eastbourne beach and swear loudly at a teenager spitting on some seagulls than to sit at home. The highlight of the day ranges between having a different type of jam or having Philip Scofield tell a hilarious joke about a tuna paté. When you worked 8am-11pm in that crappy office for 40 years, is this really what you were doing it for? Not for me.


Become the new J. D. Salinger

The third thing that an old person might want to do is write a book. They'll probably go on about how they are now much more experienced and wiser than they were when they were younger, and could never have written anything until retirement. Problem is, you could be the greatest author in the world, but when you finally have enough time to write it, you pick up the pen, begin to write what is likely to be the greatest work of fiction of the century, and then - wham - your heart decides that it's going to deny you your moment of glory after all these years. Bummer.

I'm writing a book. It'll probably end up being one of the worst books of all time, but at least it's avoiding the above. Yes, it's a bit of a bitch to come home and want to sleep, but instead crank out 1000 words a night. It's too easy to say you're going to do something later. If worst comes to worst, at least you're going to give the people at your funeral something to laugh at - the worst book of all time, or the worst of whatever the thing you're putting off until you retire is. But at least you tried. My backup plan if it all goes wrong is doing the National Novel Writing Month. Join me if you dare at www.nanowrimo.org, it's not as bad as it appears.