So far I feel that despite forty rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror, I have been lucky enough to remain relatively youthful looking and to avoid most of the obvious issues that start to afflict us older gentlemen - I mean baldness and so on - but it's becoming obvious to me that a lot of that seemingly untouched outward appearance is really just increasingly thinly stretched paper covering over a growing number of growing cracks.
The other day we realised that we hadn't been to a dentist for ages and, as there is one on our street, we nipped in and made an appointment... wish I hadn't cos now I have four fillings and two more needed. I have lived my whole life without needing one single filling and then suddenly - bam! I need six of them? What, why? Liza puts it down to the sugary horror that is Sagres but I dunno, I fear it's just them all giving up the ghost at once with age.
But worse was to come. As part of the incredibly complex and labourious process of getting a Portuguese driving licence I had to go and have an eye test yesterday. Now I knew that my eyes had deteriorated quite a lot cos sometimes I find myself unable to read things that I'm sure I would managed in the past, and sometimes I have to ask someone else to read things for me which is a bit embarrassing if I am actually nearer than them. And I particularly struggle if there is writing that is lit up, or on a lighted background or whatever, in that situation things go all blurry and I just can't read them. In fact I think I remember a kind of in-between stage when I couldn't read that sort of thing properly but I could make out the general shape and thus ultimately work out the word, but now I can't even do that. So, yeah, I knew it was gonna be bad but.... well, it was a lot worse.
So yeah, old age, teeth are rotting and eyes are failing. But there could be more to come shortly cos - as I mentioned above - there are so many medical tests you have to take to change over the licence and if a simple eye test has shone such a depressing spotlight on the inexorable march of physical decay, then what am I going to find out from the blood test, urine test, chest x-ray and the electrocardiogram? Oh yeah, and the psychological evaluation...
