The start of a new year and I’m not the kind of person who makes resolutions or new plans, but this morning, after a pleasant evening celebrating the turn of the year, I’m taken aback at a new, unwelcome feeling that has enveloped me. This is 2020 and the year in which I’m due to celebrate a milestone birthday. A biggie… the big six-oh.

It’s not like this is a surprise – several of my friends and family in the last couple of months  have casually asked how I’m going to celebrate. So far, I’ve managed to duck out of answering. In truth, I’m not going to be sixty… sixty is old and in my head and heart, I’m still 45 years old. So I don’t want it to happen. I refuse to accept my fate and I refuse to accept the depression that has been loitering with intent since I woke on this first day of 2020.

Helping to tidy the debris of last night’s celebrations, I asked My Lovely Friend how she had coped with reaching this milestone age, just last month. She’d celebrated the event with a week of parties and special events and didn’t seem especially fazed. What was her view? ‘Well’, she responded, lifting her yellow marigolds from the sink of dirty champagne flutes, ‘you have to think about the alternative… which is not reaching sixty. And we don’t want that, do we, darling?’

So I’m raging… raging against the injustice of time which inexorably moves forward. And I’m looking for a box in which to bury this rage – a big box with a tight lid. In the end, I’ve come up with a plan to help seize control of my life, which is being snatched away by age. I’m going to create a list of sixty things to do in my sixtieth year. Things I’ve always promised myself I’d do at some point in my life. I’m not sure what the list will contain just yet, but I’ve got a few ideas floating around, and I’m going to write about the progress I make.

The first is 1#. Learn to Yodel. Quite how I’m going to achieve this, or any of the other things on the list has not yet been factored into my thinking. But it’s going to be a challenge and I reckon it will keep me distracted and keep that rage in it’s box. Watch this space!

1#. Learn to Yodel

2#. Climb Pen-Y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons

3#. Swim Naked in a Warm Sea

4#. Swap my Car for a Convertible

5#. Publish an Anthology of Poetry

6#. Visit my Gourmet Girlfriends in South America

7#. Explore the Scottish Highlands

8#. Complete my First Novel

9#. Re-learn how to Play the Cello

10#. ?

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