My wife nudged me…
“Huh?” I grunted in my slumber. I opened one eye.
“You were snoring,” she complained.
I rolled over and went back to sleep. Too tired to complain about being woken up.
The following morning I woke at around 5am. The sun was streaming through the blinds in our bedroom. It looked like it was going to be a glorious day. I could hear the birds tweeting outside, bright and excited about a new day. The only problem was, I wasn’t. I was still tired after a good night’s sleep and the thought struck me – I’m getting on a bit.
I lay in bed reflecting that if you think about all of the things that signal the start of the long, inevitable decline into old age, I was exhibiting symptoms of them:
Feeling tired when you wake up in the morning – check
Waking up at the crack of dawn – check
Being the oldest dad in the playground – check
Coming last in the parent’s race on school sports day – check
Nostril hair growing faster than head hair – check
Visiting a garden centre more than twice a year – check
Not being able to run at less than 8 minutes a mile pace (my personal benchmark for 25 years) – check
Having definite middle age spread that may one day grow up to be a fully-fledged spare tire – check
Snoring – check
I blame the children. A handful of years ago I was a vigorous, energetic, thrusting young man. Now I was a hollow shell of my former self (well, perhaps not so hollow, perhaps a little lardy).
Determined to retain my youth, I burst into action later that day. I went on a live music frenzy and in a few minutes booked tickets to see Frank Turner at Ally Pally and Wolf Alice at the Brixton Academy. I mean, I can’t be old if I’m going to the Brixton Academy can I?
That evening I settled into bed again, dog tired after an energetic day running around after the kids and slowly put my book down as I drifted off to sleep.
A few minutes later, I was rudely awakened by an awful rasping sound. Grumpy at again having my much needed beauty sleep interrupted I looked around. It was then that I realised there was no-one else in the room and what had woken me up was the sound of my own snoring.
Now, that’s a new one for the list…
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