The Final Count Down

Its a week until my significant birthday. One week left of boyish, clowning youth. In one week my freckles will be liver spots. The hank of hair that used to fall charmingly over one eye, will just keep falling. My beautiful white teeth will be gone forever, taking on the leering, sallow patina of a pub piano keyboard. I shall look like I'm trying to eat corn on the cob, sideways. 

Joey Tempest realises he'll never now make it to Venus, Venus...

I have gifts to open on the big day, including this box-shaped package from Pandora. Shaking it, I surmise it contains the following: back pain, nasal hair, fallen arches, ear hair, varicose veins, back hair, longer, less satisfying visits to the toilet, failing eye sight, failing hearing, failing memory, eyebrow hair, dandruff, an overpowering smell of wee, and the thing that will eventually kill me. 

Thanks Pandora. 

You shouldn't have. 

Today I am a clean-limbed jeunesse doree, staring at a bright new dawn each morning, my path strewn with both roses and limitless opportunity. Firm of fettle, broad of shoulder, and wide of smile, all my clothes look so good on me. Then again, what can't I wear? 

Next week? 

It's a very different story. Sagging, shuffling, broken, forever bumping into a brick wall like a fucked Big Trak, with only a fading memory of what a Big Trak was. The odor of eroding calcium carbonite my only companion, my friends either dead or they've forgotten me, or they're trapped in a television studio being endlessly milked of their memories of the Blitz (both the club and the bombing campaign). The collar of my windowpane shirt frayed, my wax jacket shiny, my chunky corduroys salmon pink. Am I carrying three pairs of glasses, a battered A to Z, and a half-sucked Werthers Original in a used tissue? Yes, yes I am. 

In one week it'll be all over. I shall be an old man. I will be able to buy life insurance for less than the price of a coffee. Not that I can afford a coffee.