LIFE ASSURED

Recently, I do seem to find myself starting off the week by analyzing the weekend which has just passed, usually in the blink of an eye, and usually without making any great contribution to the world in general, or the progress of my own life in particular.

And such is the nature of that insignificant blip which I’m choosing to refer to as my “life” that these very mumblings regularly get shunted back to midweek because there’s always something already written, poised and ready to go on Monday morning (and, to be honest, on Tuesday, too) so that the observations on the weekend sometimes don’t appear until midweek or even later, and then we can all find ourselves in some kind of “bizarro world” timeshift discussing last week as if it’s this week whilst this week is still unfolding, which just confuses everybody, not least me when those weekends can be so very similar anyway and I could probably take a punt on describing next weekend already.

That said, whilst it was sill an utterly mundane chunk of an utterly mundane existence, last weekend was actually ever-so-slightly significant in that it at least began the process of looking towards the future and closing off at least part of the past.

Unusually, I struggled to wake up on Sunday morning this weekend, and we hadn't even cracked open a bottle of Pinot the night before. It may have been because Saturday had worn me out or, perhaps, because it had brought me face-to-face with the grim reaper.

Ah yes, start a story in the middle, that’s the way not to confuse everyone – although, by everyone, I do mean the six of you, far fewer, I imagine than the average audience at the kind of dinner party which I no longer get asked to go to and would probably run away from screaming if I was.

I'd started the day sitting down at my bank with a financial advisor and setting up a new round of life insurance to replace the one which just lapsed.

Well, that’s obviously a big fat lie. I’d started the day by getting up, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, having breakfast, writing some nonsense and watching some TV, before driving to the meeting, but story-telling is just as much about learning what to miss out as what to share.

Dealing with mum’s Estate lately had made me realise what a relief that small but useful “lump sum” had been when it came to paying off all the debts and creditors who, in my imagination at least, seemed to be constantly standing there with their hands out ever since that fateful day in October, and set me thinking that I needed to put something similar in place just in case the old Reaper came a-calling.

So, I made the appointment and sat down with the bloke in the suit and discussed what I thought my pitiful nonentity of a life was actually worth, and then had to answer a thousand and one questions in order to ascertain whether it was actually even worth that.

It's a humbling experience to have your life laid bare under such questioning.

I mean, I've never been “A Smoker” but because I used to have a sudden rush of insanity at the end of an evening in the pub when I was younger and decide to nab one off whoever might have a packet handy, I couldn’t say “never” in answer to that question, and now the algorithms have me marked down as a reformed nicotine head.

Then I found myself discussing with someone who was a complete stranger not half an hour earlier the innermost secrets of my medical history like my blood pressure meds and the mysterious lump which was once removed from me which all seems very peculiar to me given that, at the time, I didn’t even mention it to my family until after the operation was over.

And talking about dates with destiny, after all of that was over and the paperwork completed, leaving me to emerge blinking into the daylight and trying to recall all of the vital things which had been said and wondering whether I’d remember to complete the rest of the forms when they arrive at my house, I went to mum’s flat to begin the process of the final clearout.

This involved carting various boxes out to the car in the sudden onset rain because the weather started to get really bizarre and having to pass through several self-closing doors in order to do so which is no fun and, to be honest, given that it’s another stepping stone on the way to the final ending of that chapter, a little bit depressing, too.

Once I got everything including myself home, I then lugged them all through my own back door into the kitchen, and then lugged them all again, this time up two flights of stairs to the attic, leaving me worn out, wobbly, and in dire need of a bath.

I'm sure the guy now assessing my ability to keep breathing based upon all those questions I’d been answering wouldn't have approved of this soon to be fifty-year-old, all purple of face and wheezing and gasping his way about the place and pretending to be the teenager he never was.

After that slow start, Sunday brought a return to the flat, followed by a trip to the tip with some of her things (although there's still the furniture to remove), also a chat to my sister mostly about the state of play and, in part at least, about my writings. Given the emptiness of this particular piece, perhaps you’ll now understand why I don’t ever feel like passing them on to anywhere… ninety-nie percent of them really do have nothing to say.

Not even about some films we sat down and watched, although the documentary about Ginger Baker was freakish, and "Git Wizards" seem to be getting in everywhere, or the really, really bizarre weather we’re having and the headaches they trigger, or the neighbour who helped me out by attempting to seal that leak in the stonework around the window.

All-in-all, not your typical weekend, really, but still one which felt almost as if it hadn’t happened when Monday came…