Seniors Olympics

SENIORS OLYMPICS Images of fearsomely fit youth everywhere, healthy people, all bronzed, featured by the second, on screens and public spaces : fit and flash, but always young, Olympians. I protest, for we seniors are just as sporty; we recycle daily, suffer running noses; fallen archery’s no problem at all - well, it is - as we routinely wrestle with living. Best not to even mention water sports. Weightlifting self out of armchair is hourly, when diving for the loo, as is rowing back from much too easily expressed criticism. We ping pong daily with potions and pills. Sailing close to the wind, shooting mouth off, leads to embarrassed synchronized grinning. Annoy us and you will get a right kayaking. Much of our lives consists of sundry hurdles; shops are like a cross-country marathon, or a steeplechase broken into relays, bench to leaned-on wall, to bench again. And, we’ve all done pent- and heptathlon, with the dec- coming in to (or out of) focus, we need not discus these ageist Olympics, I have hammered my point enough .... Alan McAlpine Douglas