December 2003: You know you're getting old when . . . .

Note: This is to be read with the New Year blog. It's just a bit I added because it actually happened and I think it is funny.

You know you're getting old when . . . . your eyesight starts to go!

It was just after my 50th birthday, very nearly five years ago when I noticed I had difficulty reading small print. Gradually over the last five years it's gotten worse and now I need spectacles to read with. Which brings me to this - slightly linked to CVO - story.

Over Christmas Sharen and I shared a villa with my daughter, Claire and her husband, Adam. One night I decided to take a bath being tired of showers. I repaired to the bathroom and began to draw a nice bath of hot water. Of course, when I say 'hot' I am referring to solar-power hot water. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I began to draw a bath of lukewarm water . . . . and I needed some bubbles to froth it up a bit. I called out to Sharen (my wife), "Where's the bubble bath?"

She shouted back, over an episode of East Enders where a mini-bus full of happy, young people were about to plummet down a hillside in the Scottish highlands, miles from anywhere - the usual, happy Christmas fare! - "There's some foaming bath on my bedside cabinet."

I went into the bedroom and looked on the cabinet, and, seeing a bottle bearing the letters F and B (ergo, foaming bath) I picked it out of the assembled women's bits and pieces that cluttered the cabinet and returned to the bathroom.

I squeezed the tube - a pump-action one - over the bath and awaited the bubbles before climbing in. After three or four squirts the bubbles failed to materialise so I did a few more . . . then a few more, . . . and then a few more! After squeezing out half a container of foaming bath and in the absence of a singular bubble I tired of squeezing and stepped in and began my bubbleless soak.

When I later returned to the living room (the minibus was now upside down and one poor kid was in danger of being burned alive, trapped in the back - ah, what a joy these Christmas soaps are!) I remarked how ineffective the foaming bath was and my inability to coax even one bubble from it.

This prompted Sharen to investigate. She went into the bathroom and returned in fits of laughter, the foaming bath in her hand. "No wonder you couldn't get any bubbles, you silly bugger," she cried, "you've been using my Flattening Balm instead!"

For those of you not familiar with Flattening Balm, it's what the ladies use to flatten their hair.

This revelation elicited peals of laughter from everyone but me. When the tears had cleared from her eyes my daughter opined, "I'll bet you've got the straightest pubes in Portugal!"

And do you know what? I had!