Baking a cake

The future gets closer each day.
It's two in the afternoon and I dozed off in the chair for half an hour as part of the "day's activities".

It reminded me of the days when I had a contract installing data circuits in an 'Old Peoples Home' in East Ham watching the oldies sitting around in the main lounge sleeping the day through, hung up on tranquillisers. I used to joke with the staff that I wasn't a resident but as I started myself out of my sleep it occurred to me I had the pedigree. 

Life is about tomorrow more than today, unless you are lucky enough to be doing something special and tomorrow, not yet having arrived, one can still hope. The activities when you retire centre around the domestic and mundane. There are few exciting, what if's, there aren't any gambles, only the surety of the same old, same old and even then there's no actual surety !!
In some ways this is ok, the trials of strength, the conflict, the ongoing need to perform at ones best are yesterday's problem. The comfort of knowing that it's paid for and that the increasing improbability that you will shake of the lassitude which inhibits most of your planning is no longer threatening.
The warmth of a hot bath and a cosy bed is the prism through which you begin to judge the day, the headlong dive into the pages of a good book who's plot you are immersed in, the characters swollen into reality by the skill of a good author.
Cooking and the Internet, You Tube to play housemaid as you pour a little of that and heat a little this, reveals hidden talents of which you proudly announce to friends and family as if you were the embodiment of Jamie Oliver. The smart phone captures the gastronomic triumph and with a wosh is transported around the world in a nano second to establish that you are still around, a valuable item, someone of consequence.
The things you should avoid are the things you were good at since the comparison is usually unfavourable. The balance isn't quite there. The wind and the muscular strength have moved away. It's no use running for that bus, rather wait for the next one, there is usually a next one and you have the time.
'Invisibility' is a bummer since internally you are still overpoweringly in your own bubbling with things to say, holding the court of one with an opinion which no one seems to want to hear.
As you pass down the isle in the Supermarket or walk through suburbia on your way home you are invisible, inconsequential an impediment and yet for all that you carry in your heart and your head the memories of bygone times when you were noticed and people wanted to hear.
This is not a melancholy message and it's not the same message for all those of a certain vintage but it has enough seeds of truth in it to bake a cake.