We've heard rather a lot about youth lately, but we have our own problems. For a start, I have trigger finger. I try to unscrew a lid and the finger boings out of joint. The long drive to dog camp gave me terrible leg cramp, which made nights in the tent even more awful. Then I came home and cracked my head tremendously hard on a shelf. And if that sounds minor to you, then poor Fielding's ancient gums are beginning to rot, the bacteria has built up, which means a sort of hideous gum-stabbing, blood-letting session at the dentist. Worse still, his hamstring won't get better. Why?
"You're too old," said the doctor brutally. "You shouldn't really run any more." But Fielding doesn't know his luck. Olivia can barely even walk normally. She has to keep looking down for sticking-up bits of pavement, otherwise she might easily fall flat on her face, which she did last week while holding on to two toddlers and licking an ice-cream, and she'd barely got over an attack of searing pain in her ribs, called costochondritis, when her ankle conked out, perhaps because she was walking oddly because of the excruciating rib pain.
Worrying that she might drop off her perch with all these ghastly things going on, and not wanting to end up a bruised and motionless blob, she asked her doctor: "Are you someone who believes in assisted suicide?"
"I can't help you to die, but I'll send you to the best place," said he reassuringly, and Olivia limped off to Morrisons. But outside the entrance three men were standing with placards.
"Can I sell you a funeral?" asked one. Olivia screamed "go away" and fled inside, shopped, came out, and a taller, thinner more deathly looking placard man asked her again. "Leave me alone," screamed Olivia. "How could you?"
"Let me give you a big hug," said the original funeral seller, but Olivia had had enough. She tottered away as fast as her crumbly old legs would allow.
Nerve-racking days, tormented nights, malfunctioning bodies. Something for the young to look forward to, when they stop feeling riotous.
