Plus some

It is only too easy to keep noting, and even laughing at, the wheelbarrow of things you can no longer do in the upper decades of Anno Domini.  (Did you know one is supposed to call it 'Before the Common Era', now.    Political Correctness takes up rather too much room in any old wheelbarrow). But it is also comforting and even rewarding to treasure what one can still do or even acquire the skill to do in a companion wheelbarrow.

, In my experience though, there really are scarcely enough of these pluses to fill a wheelbarrow.  What about a nice wide drawer instead?  Anyway, the first thing that springs to mind is what I may call a 'yes but'. In earlier times I would have chimed that it wasn't Tuesday, it was Wednesday.  It was not he that said that. It was the other.  You get the drift.  Now I just let these disparities go and feel more comfortable for it. I never enjoyed the physical aspect of housework but I did it emphatically.  Now I indulge in paid help and dust the top of the light switches myself. It is a special treat to have supper in bed on a tray, watching television, crosswording or knitting.  You can't do that at an earlier age: decadance is less of a sin up here where I am. I can permit -  I lie: encourage -  the cat to sleep on the bed.  This would have been non-negotiable when there were two other legs in the bed. I must say that there was a time when I dreamt I was being fanned across my face by a  slow leafy tree and woke to find it was a hairy Persian tail right beside me on the pillow. Then there are the things one has a duty to do.  Sifting the 'must' from the 'should' is another freeing situation.  Indeed, a day when there are neither 'shoulds' nor 'musts' can bring a feeling of non-entitlement very restoring in itself.  When I was younger, there were no distinctions between those two and I wore myself out trying to fulfill them all. (Can you have 'all' when you have just mentioned 'two'?)  I am more profligate: yes, really.  Stuff I would have seen with desire and with envy  but consigned to the wishful-thinking bin I now consider in real time and very often give in.  I have what was a very expensive radio/tape player. The remote control which governed it doesn't work.  Yes, I have changed the batteries. The maker is no longer interested but wants me to buy a new model at a breath-stopping price, all for want of a remote control.  However, an advertisement came through the post about a special offer radio, CD, and vynal contraption that was half the price of the other and, no doubt, with remote controls that work: because I don't want to get off the bed to turn it on or off, silly.  Bore da