12 Things You Don't Want To Hear

A guest post. Wendy & I write every morning together but separately, employing Skype as our trusty messenger.  It's like Pilates for the soul.  Today's exercise was "12 things you don't want to hear." 

1. You have an allergy to wine. And olives. And bread and cheese. And sitting on the side of the road in France.
2. To get there you have to climb this mountain.   But don’t worry you’ll be attached by a rope, to some muscular jock without a sense of humour.
3. You can’t swim anymore. You can’t put on those dreadful swimming costumes  and that latex cap that you insist on leaving above your ears so you look like a bald elf, below which your every curve looks like a major mountain range and anything that can wobble, does. But when you put your foot into that water that looks blue but isn’t when you lift a handful up towards your face, all curves are forgotten and it’s just you and the sound of your breathing and the sense of all things being possible. You can’t do that anymore. But you can watch.
4. Your dog should be put down. Haven’t been there, haven’t done that. Know it may come but there is always the hope that it will be beautiful like someone slipping away in their sleep having written their will and told everyone that mattered how much they cared and having lived a long and fulfilled life.
5. There’s no cure for it.
6. You do the maths. And you can’t use a calculator and we’ll all watch and we’ll put a five year old beside you and see who does it faster.
7. You didn’t put your money there, did you? Because that will be the holiday to South Africa and the new bike and the double chin you were hoping to lose down the toilet.
8. There are only centre seats left I’m afraid. No you’re not afraid. You’ve got this zippy uniform on and you’re not going to be sitting in the middle of two people on an overnight flight who will both fall asleep in upright positions whilst you struggle to find a way to leave your head on top of your neck and to make it seem natural.
9. I think this comes in a bigger size. So the struggle ends in a label saying 16,  and how can that be when you were so good about not eating the pasta and only drinking low fat milk. Because it is the slope that leads you to plus sizes for the bigger woman in you and from there it’s just a straight slide to the mu-mu.
10. It’s impossible. Because I might believe you, and then Einstein might be wrong with his "in the middle of difficulty finding opportunity”. For that is where I have always hung my hat and I need to think there are ways round the word no, in order to get up and put clean knickers on.
11. You can never go back. Maybe. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to go back to Pinner. But the Mediterranean is still there to be swum in and Justin de Blank in South Ken may still make the best plum tart and Ian Charleson was still the best Sky Masterson and Daphne Du Maurier is still riveting.
12. You’re out of time. You can’t take the Trans-Siberian railway and go to Mongolia. You can’t learn how to make bread. You can’t get a black belt in Aikido. You can’t wear an evening gown and dance to Nat King Cole

-- Wendy Murray (c)