So goes the famous song, ’Sixteen Tons’. It was written in 1946 about the hard life in a Kentucky coal-mine. I finished working at the coal face some years back. And now I’m just another retired ‘old git’ in their declining years. But, on my birthday, I give thanks that I am still here. Able to sit in the sunshine and talk about life insurance, purchase a stair lift or plan my own funeral. The primary considerations of pensioners in the UK, according to advertisers on afternoon TV.
My financial
debts are thankfully few. I’ve lived long enough to pay off my mortgage. And I don’t
have expensive habits or a lavish lifestyle. Unless you include the money I
spend on bicycles. Which I suppose I really ought to. But hell, who’s counting?
My debts
are all in other directions. To the medical staff of the NHS who discovered my
series of cancers and removed them. To my friends and family for the love and
support they continue to give me. But most of all to my dearest T, who has been
a fount of generous love and unstinting care, whatever the situation. And many
situations there have been. It’s now almost seven years since I was told by an
eminent surgeon at the Mater Hospital that I should not expect to live beyond a
year. Experts can indeed be wrong sometimes. But I know I wouldn’t have got to
this birthday without her.
