What a Puzzle!

Well, dear reader – I have been neglecting you, haven't I? You wouldn't think it would be so hard to find the time to write a couple of hundred words, would you? But it is – I've had a very busy week trying to cram everything in. I feel as if I've been trying to fit together one of those 'Krypton Factor' puzzles (actually, you can also get them in Christmas Crackers) where there are various shapes that have to be arranged in such as way that they will form a perfect square. You always think you're just about getting there, when you suddenly realize that you're going to be left with a strange, dislocated elbow shape that clearly won't fit in anywhere. That's what my life has been like this week.

Of course, I don't always help myself I suppose. There are two contributory factors to this state of affairs: 1) I'm always overly optimistic about the number of things I can achieve in a given period of time; and 2) I'm very good at underestimating the amount of time I will waste doing meaningless things such as looking at Facebook and playing Mah Jong. If it weren't for these two factors, I'm sure I'd get everything done.

I was reading this morning about a man who has tragically died after falling 200ft whilst out on a country walk. I've done lots of country walks in my time, and have never once thought that I wouldn't come back alive. I feel very sorry for him but – and this was the truly shocking part of the report – it was stated that the man was in his mid-thirties. Nothing shocking about that, true - but then, later in the report, a police spokesman was quoted as saying: "We recovered the body of a middle-aged man..." What? In his thirties and he's classed as "middle-aged"? I know that policemen are getting younger and younger these days, but to make such an error of judgement seems astonishing. If someone in their mid-thirties is "middle-aged", then what does that make me? Physically, I'm a pink-faced old man with white blonde hair; spiritually, I'm a hundred and twenty years old, but mentally I'm still a teenager. How someone who was young enough to be my child can be described as middle-aged is incroyable!

Okay, time to get some work done. My first task, after yesterday's paella party, is to hire a horse and cart to take the empties down to the bottle bank. Hmm, we did go a bit crazy and it will require a strong horse to do that.