It has been a creeping process.

It seems to be complete now.

I have become old and grumpy.

There are the physical manifestations.

I have given up combing my hair because each combing produces fistfuls of my dwindling precious mane. At least the local birds are going to have a grand assortment of nests all lined with my cranial produce.

The stoop is now permanent. Trying to straighten myself up is just too painful. It’s less painful to just stare at the ground ahead as I walk. There again, backache is just a part of life these days. I also have lost my stride. I used to annoy people because my stride used to leave them behind and they’d have to sprint to catch up with me. Now they have to wait patiently while I catch up with them. I’m becoming a shuffler.

The other night I went to change a lightbulb. I used one of those two-step folding ladders as that would bring me to ceiling height. Standing on the top step [about eighteen inches above the floor] I felt really dizzy and had to climb down very carefully. I used to climb three-section ladders and walk along the parapet of three story [over basement] Georgian terraces without turning a hair.

Then there is the annoyance factor.

Most things annoy me now. I used to be a very tolerant chap. Now people just piss me off.

.Why do the modern yoof talk with such an appalling accent? This accent must be a result of the adoration of all things American because there are shades of a twang there.. One of the most irritating things is the weird replacement of “tt” in the middle of a word with “dd”. Utter becomes Udder. Better becomes Bedder. And of course there is the ubiquitous “like”. Like everything that is like said has to like include a multitude of “like”s. Like. “Like” means approval or equivalence and little else. It isn’t like [i.e. is not equivalent to] a condiment that is liberally sprinkled over every sentence. That one is definitely down to Americans. It’s an irritating and absolutely pointless affectation which has just become a grating part of modern speech.

I received a letter this morning. It’s from my Credit Union requesting proof that I am who I say I am. They request proof of my address by showing them a utility bill or a bank statement. I don’t get any bills, statements or any of that crap because, at their request I have gone paperless. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that I received their letter posted to my address which kind of proves that I live where I say I live and the address is correct. Otherwise I wouldn’t have received their mail and wouldn’t be in a position to respond. Logic is quickly becoming a lost art.

The list of annoyances goes on and on and I cold damn near fill a book with them.

But writing this is beginning to annoy me.