When I was about 10 I sometimes wondered what it would feel like to be 70. Now I know.

I also wondered what it would feel like to be dead. I’ll get back to you on that.

I’m glad to have reached this day, for I’ve long had a niggling suspicion that I might not. I’ve outlived my mother by three years, and if I manage another 12 months I’ll have outlived—just—my father. My sister is seven years older and still going strong, but then women tend to last longer, my mother excepted.

Life has fallen into several compartments: Langwathby: Penrith and Carlisle; Cambridge; London and marriage; Nottingham; Dublin; Derby. Then came ordination after which the pace of change quickened: Wirksworth, Chesterfield, Portlaoise (Ireland again), Burton. Ten house moves since marriage in 1973 and four Irish Sea crossings with resultant administrative hassle of tax, banks, utilities and whatnot in UK and Republic of Ireland, the latter involving both punts and euro. Susan and I became experts in organising moves from one jurisdiction to another, again and again. We learnt the value of renunciation—chucking out—physically and psychologically.

For much of the time, trying to juggle this with the demands of family, career, job politics, and being English in Ireland in the late 80s, I felt like a rabbit in headlights. This was not helped by the agony—and I mean agony—between 1988 and 1991 of living in Ireland while having first both sons then one at boarding schools in England until they were ready for Irish secondary school. Think ferries, overnight drives, unaccompanied flights for the boys, nine or ten times a year. Other people seem to cope well with such like but I did not. In the 1990s I needed lots of help. And later I came to realise that, as with many parents, the job, and in my case the students, got a better part of me than my family did. Thankfully, the feeling of guilt is now behind me.

The children navigated the turbulence of adolescence in a new country, and settled there making great friends and going on to college. Victoria married an Irishman, and Edward took Irish citizenship. Hugh, the middle one, went off to pursue his childhood American dream. After travelling around, then in order Seattle, marriage, fatherhood, and Wasilla (Alaska), he and his family ended up in Texas near his wife’s folks, where in The Great Catastrophe of 2015 he died. When I saw him last we were planning road trips “if I’m still alive” said I, to which he replied “you’ve thirty years in you yet”. He didn’t even have thirty days.

But the rest of us are still extant. We talk to one another and we love each other unconditionally and unlimitedly. I could not have survived without them.

So what does it feel like to be 70? 

My blood pressure is 135/80, give or take—woefully shocking for someone who consumes eggs, salt and butter in industrial quantities. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t listen to doctors or take statins. My resting pulse (lying in bed first thing of a morning) is just below 60. I feel better than I did 10, even 20, years ago, funny turn notwithstanding: https://ramblingrector.me/2020/05/07/a-funny-turn/. 

In my head I’m immaturing with age, I feel like a stroppy teenager. Long may it continue.

I have a great future behind me.

It feels fine.