The Seventh Age Of Man - Day 1

The Boy Shakespeare knew a thing or two.

                                  Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

And so the Pig has embarked on his seventh decade. It is only a number but I must confess that this one has given me more pause for thought than any previous landmark. I am tempted to feel old. Is that a bad thing? Rage, rage against the dying of the light, as another poet of note put it.

If only more clients had cause to be that grateful

Sans teeth? Quite good on that score - despite close on forty years of rugby I have lost only one tooth. Sans eyes - well I am wearing my cheap reading glasses to write this but otherwise my laser-enhanced eyesight still does me proud. Sans taste - aye there's the rub. Nothing particularly wrong on that score, apart from the uneducated palate that has accompanied me all my life. I still fight against this handicap and as if to prove that there is life in the old dog yet, my last two nights' drinking ought to satisfy any oenophile who has strayed onto this site. On Sunday I blew the dust off a present from a grateful client from my former life, indeed a client at the heart of the best work I ever did. Dom Perignon Cuvee 1992. Yum yum; a delicate mousse, and a nutty smoothness.

Then last night for my birthday tea I had steak, chips and onion rings - my request. My other culinary favourite had arrived at lunchtime - my Mum's quiche delivered to the doorstep. Spoilt brat. Anyway, to accompany my steak (beautifully cooked by the Groupie) I opened the penultimate bottle of the La Serra Barolo 2001 from the cellar (alright, I admit it's a cupboard). The Groupie had got me four bottles of this divine stuff for my fiftieth birthday, having first encountered it at the Fat Duck. Yum, yum, yum. The odds are against the final bottle lasting to my seventieth. 

So after this a day of lethargy, I have resolved not to mope. I have been blessed to enjoy six previous ten year childhoods (the Bard got that bit wrong) so I am going to make the most of this one. Sans everything? Not bloody likely mate. Not yet.