25.2.13

Today in the shower, as I tried to make my fingers meet – right hand over shoulder and left bent up my back (I can do it the other way round) – I found my thoughts making a tour that has become a habit. Anything I can do now, I will be able to do less well or not at all in ten years time. It’s downhill only from now on. I had two follow-on thoughts. 1) At the end of Gillies book about POWs ‘non-work’ activities during the war, there was a chapter about what they did after release and for the rest of their lives. John Lowe, a prisoner in Changi, and Formosa, at the age of 88 attended children’s dancing classes. At the age of 90 he danced in Ely Cathedral. 2) it’s pretty silly to worry about what I won’t be able to do in ten years time. It’s possible that I won’t be around, so it is infinitely more productive to worry about what I can do today (always bearing in mind that staying fit in case I have another thirty plus years to go is a generally good idea).  I make no progress in my attempts to relearn the piano. Another fantasy I have is that there will be a crash course for incompetent oldies to learn the piano i.e. do nothing else for a week. I expect there is, and it probably costs as much as a new piano.