Happy Birthday.

Winter fires burning low but warmly

Well it was a very good start for a new year :)
First there was freshly squeezed orange juice and then there was emptying my rooms of surplus furniture so that I can start assembling desks and work tables.
Then there was music group and a new very competent lady who played first fiddle with me. What a delight to have a partner who plays in time and knows where we are and agrees with me about the difficult bits. I think she must be a regular player in an orchestra and perhaps a very good one. I do hope she comes again.
And then a really nice 18th birthday gig with a happy small crowd of teenagers who danced all night, giggled and shrieked and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Such pretty and lithe creatures. Lovely altogether :)

I've been trying to invent Christmas photos for cards. What do you think? paste some berries in? or not?
More Photomatix stuff :) when you've got a birthday pesent you've got to use it, right :)

My cold has turned into a good old-fashioned smoker's cough. And now it hurts. This is unusual and last night I wondered if I'd pulled a muscle or broken a rib! And naturally I also wondered if I'd suddenly got that nasty cancer thing that we don't like to mention out loud even though we all know about it. Especially if we do regular abuse of the poor old body and are over fifty. Damn it all. I haven't got time for cancer. I'll assume aching muscles for a couple of days. Then I'll go and get it checked out if it hasn't gone. (The thing that worries me if it's a broken rib - not unheard of with severe coughs - is that not only do they take a long time to heal but they get worse before they get better. I know this because Eldest broke a rib once, mountain biking and it was a week before I agreed with him that he really was damaged and took him to the doctor. Who said, yes it was broken, no, I was quite right they couldn't have done anything to help it and Oh well hard luck but as it heals it grows lumpy bits and hurts more and more for quite a while.)

Every so often my body points out that a) it's not as young as it was (can't quite remember when) and b) I treat it badly and one day it'll break down. (Like the car). I try and be reasonable about it. The inconvenience varies from quite big (being laid out by a cold for three days) to small (having to spend whole minutes scrubbbling about amongst my teeth every day twice a day and going to see the horrible hygienist regularly).
Overall I'm very lucky about my body and I have to assume that a lot of its complaints are shared by millions of ageing bodies all over the world! And of course, however many hours you spend sweating in the gym or smoothing nice smelling stuff over it in the bathroom it will eventually wear out. It may look a bit better than, for instance, mine :)* But we haven't yet found a way to live and be beautiful forever.
Too many warnings and too many promises from the 'health' industries may make it look as though old age can be staved off but goodness! Life's too short to spend in the bathroom applying potions and in the gym fighting the inevitable. Old age is just another compromise. When you get to it, you have to accept some limitations and then carry on with whatever you were going to do anyway. There comes a time when looking beautiful isn't an option but looking forwards is always available.
I say nothing about giving up smoking or eating less or going to bed earlier. Because I probably will do nothing about them either.**

Umm. Have a nice healthy happy day tomorrow :) You deserve it.

*Ok, probably a lot better than mine. There's no need to go into detail about the fat bits and the lumpy bits and the scraggy bits. Or the wrinkly biotas (some typos have to be left just as they are) thank you very much.
**Actually, in the interests of avoiding the six month tickly cough, I've cut down cigarettes by half. Not enough, apparently! Pooh.