We had my brother-in-law and his family over on Sunday.  They don’t come very often, and it is lovely to see them, but we do have to brace ourselves a bit for our big, boisterous, and loud eight year old nephew’s visits.

His sister, who turned twelve on Saturday (happy birthday to the fabulous Miss V) tends to sit and stare at her laptop with her earphones on for most of the time.  Goodness knows how addicted she’ll be in a couple of years time, but as my brother-in-law once commented ‘you shouldn’t poke a sleeping tiger.’

Anyhoo, my nephew’s energy levels are something to behold, in fact, I think he got Miss V’s share. He bounces around begging us to play with him.  Anything physical, it doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s by his rules. He is in the school rugby team and likes nothing better than a ‘bundle’.  Sunday was a hot ‘un and really not conducive to running around much, but despite his endless complaints about the heat, it didn’t stop him.

By tea time we’d all had a go at tennis, or cricket, or throwing balls, or chasing, tickling, whatev’s and were fairly tired of it. The dog had hidden.

Bored by our needing to replenish with tea and cake, he begged his dad to play with him.

‘I’m tired, I’m too old.’ Said my brother-in-law.

Now, I was the oldest adult there, by several years. I am positively ancient, but one thing I will not tolerate myself saying is ‘I’m too old’. I absolutely and completely refuse to be too old to do anything. I believe once you get in that mind set you can never crawl your sad old way out of it.

My body might not be quite what it used to be (actually it’s considerably more than it used to be, but that’s another matter…) but I still can’t quite get to grips in my head that I’m supposed to be grown up… a pensioner even, a senior citizen, a twirly (we had a bus driver friend who called all pensioners ‘twirly’s because they were always turning up with their bus passes before they were allowed to use them and asking ‘am I tooearly’ (twirly). It’s stuck!)

In my head I’m still silly me. I’m still up for adventure, having fun, adrenaline rushes, and yes, just running about and being daft and having water fights. I still want to dance wildly and sing loudly and out of tune. I want to wear clothes from young folk shops, and laugh…. laugh lots and lots.

To this end I try and keep myself a bit fit, the dancing around the kitchen helps, as does my daily walk with the dog, and of course, yoga. I also try to eat well, and enjoy food and drink without pickiness or guilt. Do you know, despite being the elder by some years, I was the only adult there on Sunday not on medication for anything, so something’s working. Maybe I’m just lucky and have good genes. 

So I advised my young nephew never to accept ‘I’m too old’ as an excuse from anybody, he’d be doing them a favour. Neither my brother-in-law, or his wife (who is some eighteen years younger than me) agreed, so aaarrgghhh…. Of course, it was me who had to get up and go run about again.

It took me most of Monday to recover 😊