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Friday 17 May 2013

WordPress Daily Prompt: Too Big to Fail

Tell us something you would attempt if your were guaranteed not to fail (and tell us why you havn't tried it yet).



Sculpture, Museum, Solothurn


At the age of 66, going on for 67 in December, my ideas of trying something completely different are slowly being buried in a life of comfort, doing what you want to do, when you want to do it and laziness. At last I can allow myself to be lazy.

When are you going to have a book published? A question I am even flattered to be posed from time to time. My writing worthy of a book, with a hard cover (or perhaps Kindle style) and a mention in a magazine, perhaps even a television interview, it being guaranteed not to fail? No thank you, although I have thought about it. First of all I have to reserve a certain amount of time every day for regular writing for which I am too lazy. I have noticed as the years pass bye, time is the most precious thing you have and I do not want to spend it thinking what happens next in my novel, or rereading everything twenty times to make sure it is grammatically correct.

In my younger years I thought I was living forever. When your hair turns grey, your movements slow down, and you have senior moments of forgetting, you realise that life is not permanent. Time seems to speed up after reaching retirement. You are left with a pension (if you are lucky), people offer you their seat on the bus, and boutiques become forbidden territory. The clothes sizes slowly become too small and you find the parts of the body which are seen in the modern dress world, are no longer worth seeing; hipster trousers showing the stomach and skirts above the knees resembling a long pullover. The low cut t-shirts are perhaps more suitable, décolleté permitting, although the designs are not exactly for oldies. Do you really want a t-shirt with the words “Hug me”, “Sex Pistols” or “All daddy wanted was a blow job”.

So what is left to do. When this epic work is finished I start searching for a publisher According to WordPress the publisher is waiting for my call. My book is published and I become recognised as a successful author. Perhaps my body is not ready for this stress and at my age a heart attack is always a possibility.

In my younger years I dreamt of a career with the English police, naturally plain clothes, a detective. Due to my knowledge of foreign languages I even imagined being chosen as a member of the MI5 (English secret service) or even MI6 (English secret service abroad). I did not try that one because my ancestry was not notable. In Great Britain they seemed only to accept high born people, generally when daddy was an army officer; definitely not someone from the East End of London growing up in a slum, whose mum and dad belonged to the working class. I never tried it, would never have been chosen, and if it was now a possibility, I would probably crack on the first mission, not everyone is a female James Bond.

So thank you WordPress, but I cannot accept this chance of a life time. I would just like to spend the rest of my life on this planet stress less and in peace with Mr. Swiss, my children, my felines, and my country.

1 comment:

  1. I wanted to write a novel when i\ was younger, but I just couldn't apply myself to concentrated writing, and could never come up with interesting or original stories.

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