70 | beetleypete

Anyone who has read my blog this week will already be aware that I was 70 years old on Wednesday. My week started on Monday, so this is the last day of celebrations. Given how much I have celebrated already, I think a quiet day will be the decent thing to do.

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It has been a great week indeed. Two meals out, a trip to a nature reserve, and lots of nice gifts and cards received. After Wednesday, the weather improved too, and it has been lovely and sunny since. Then last night, it was rounded off in style. Julie took me to a restaurant in North Tuddenham, having arranged for my four step-children and two of their partners to come too. So we had a table for eight, a very nice family celebration, and I had a ’70’ balloon! I received more gifts and cards on the night, along with the news that all of Julie’s children have given some money so that we can go out again soon, and enjoy another meal on them. There was also a box of twelve 70th-birthday themed cupcakes, home-made.
This has been my best birthday week ever!

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Of course, the world news is far from encouraging, and the situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate. I confess that the last thing I expected to be happening in my 70th year was a new war in Europe. And just when I am at my lowest income since I left school, the price of everything has sky-rocketed. Oh well, no point complaining about that. The rich have always got richer, and the rest of us poorer. Just read any history book.

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Ollie’s moult has to be seen to be believed, with his fur all over the house necessitating daily vacuuming more seriously than usual. We are trying to get him booked in to the dog-groomer next week, as a good wash and brush up will take care of at least some of the shedding fur.

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Regular readers will also be aware that I still don’t have my renewed driving licence. (Sorry regulars, here I go again.) Next week marks the beginning of my first full week of not being able to drive legally until my licence is sorted out. I am trying not to be too annoyed about that, but it’s not easy.

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I hope you all have a lovely Sunday. And if you can, go for a drive somewhere nice. You will appreciate the freedom of being able to do that, believe me.

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When I was young, Religious Education was compulsory in school. I had a Bible at home, and read it more like a history book, than religious instruction. Parts of it were very dull, but others had action, adventure, even wars. I grew up not believing in any God or religion, but I did remember some of the quotes and catchphrases that I read. Two of them in particular stayed with me.

‘Mene, mene, Tekel Upharsin’.

Do you know what that is? It is the actual ‘Writing on the wall’ that gave us the phrase so often used today.

Then there was this one.

‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.’

So I was around eight years old, and could work out that they were talking about living until the age of seventy. Eighty at a push, if you had that ‘strength’ mentioned.

I spent the next twenty years expecting to die at seventy. Then I became an EMT in the London Ambulance Service. It wasn’t long before I realised that so many people die long before they are seventy. Especially people like me at the time who smoked cigarettes, worked shifts in stressful jobs, didn’t eat properly, and liked a drink on their days off.

Very soon, I started to think that fifty might be a good age for me to live to. When you do that job, you do become something of a fatalist.

Surprise surprise! I made it to 2022, and I am 70 years old today.

Maybe the Bible got it right?