I don't mind getting older in principle. I'm prepared for it as I am prepared for the eventual breakdown and collapse of every electrical item in my home. Inevitability blah blah blah, entropy yadda yadda, and as Tom Yorke sang it, gravity always wins. Amen.
Most collapse is, mercifully, barely noticeable. Had I not squatted over a mirror recently to gauge the progress or decline (it was fortunately the latter) of a hard, nuggety thing that suddenly appeared immediately adjacent my anus, I never would have discovered the one centimetre-long skin tag hanging off me.
My GP, a very heterosexual, unsentimental, near-retirement NHS type who probably steels himself when he sees my name on the schedule, said there was really nothing to be done about it.
'You mean, you can't freeze it off?' I asked.
'There's no point' he sighed, confirming (a) that my body is simply and surely growing older and (b) that I could expect more small tentacle-like growths from god knows where.
It makes me envy those people who enjoy surprises. They must look at that piece of pinkish skin dangling from their earlobe one morning and cry 'Well, how about that?! Hey, Margaret! Come meet the newborn!'
I go to sleep every night fantasising about snipping the thing off with nail clippers. And I swear I would, but how do you dress that wound?
Thankfully, I neither smell, taste, hear nor see with my anus, so I don't think about it all day, every day. I do, however, look at things and read every day, and this is where my goat is convincingly getting got.
Last year, I was introduced to a new kind of spectacle called the varifocal. One prescription per pair of eyeglasses is no longer sufficient to satisfy all my 'seeing needs.' There are in fact three prescriptions tucked into the varifocal lens, and I must now remember to tilt my head up or down depending on whether I wish to see, say, the TV eight feet away or the soprano on stage eighty feet away.
What's really annoying is that, like most people, I prefer to wobble my head in any direction I please at any time I please. However, if I flop it back while watching television, the whole box goes foggy. Tilt downward while reading a magazine, and everything in frame stretches, without regard to proportion or the laws of physics as I (barely) remember them, in all directions. If I nod my head to indicate agreement, I feel as though I just stepped off Space Mountain.
The aesthetic is also compromised. Varifocal lenses don't fit just any old pair of frames. A huge plastic pair (think Jewish women, Long Island, 1970s) is the preferred nesting spot of the varifocal. So convert to the chosen faith today and save yourself some hassle and embarrassment.
Now, big spectacles with three prescriptions in each lens may sound bad enough, and it is. But last month, my optician told me that the reading prescription needed doubling in strength. So I had to pick out another bloody pair of giant, New World Ashkenazi frames and slap down £250. Last year's prescription has been relegated to a brownish 'distance vision' pair with a reading 'layer' that will no doubt cause extreme dizziness at the next roundabout.
Which brings me to the reason I'm really happy I moved away from Elephant and Castle a couple years ago. I remember back when ivory was bought and sold in velvet sacks...
(At least it won't be my hearing that goes next.)
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