For Your Age?

Nature had an idea when it decided that it should prepare me for getting older. It made me start receding at 18. Even younger maybe. In fact my jesting mind allows my memory to believe that I looked like Phil Mitchell as a 3 year old.

Nature prepared me well. I became not at all bothered about losing my hair. I embraced it. On a practical level I have saved thousands of pounds on the barbers and my short morning grooming routine meant I had more time for a cuppa and a couple of ciggies while watching Big Breakfast before running for the bus to get to work.

So, at 45 I am now totally accepting of the ageing process. The morning groom has changed and, in a cruel twist laid on by nature, I do have to deal with hair now. It’s just that this hair grows from my nostrils and out of my ears. I first realised that these hairs were noticeable to others when I got a nose hair strimmer for father’s day a few years ago. It made a change from socks, I suppose.

Today our stuff arrived on pallets from the UK. Luckily the builders were on hand to help lift everything off of the lorry with us. One of them, Thiago, commented on all of the gym equipment. I replied that I am a Personal Trainer and I aim to continue here in Portugal.

“Ah ha!” He exclaimed as he looked me up and down. “I thought you looked good.”

My face made that weird look that it always does when I’ve been complimented but trying to play it down as I also sucked my belly in a bit more (the fresh bread is too nice here) before he went on to continue his comment…

“…for your age.”

For my age. What does that even mean? Do I look good or not?!! He doesn’t know my age!

If he thinks I’m 65 then I probably do look pretty good for my age.

Another thing came in the pallets today. A mirror. I’ve enjoyed not having a mirror in the house. I even had to use my phone camera to look at when it came to shaving my follically challenged head. Other than that I’ve not felt the need to check myself out all that much. I was looking at myself in the reflection of a cafe the other day to find a couple weirded out by some bald bloke giving them a blue steel look. But now I have a full length mirror in the bathroom and my gym stuff I’m sure to be doing the thorax pose daily like I’m an extra on Pumping Iron.

I haven’t lifted anything heavy for months now and I can feel that my body is ready to take on a deadlift or two. Despite all the wonderful bread that keeps finding its way into my mouth I have been sticking to a nutrition plan of sorts. Decades of calorie counting has ensured that I don’t need to sit and work out what every meal adds up to as I can calculate it in my head simply enough and I know I stay within my weight maintenance limits. It means that the jeans I packed last October and arrived today still fit me.

But my joints and muscles have suffered. They’ve not been working as they’re used to. My gym equipment couldn’t come soon enough.

And it won’t be long until some unwitting couple sat by a cafe window will see me strut towards them, pouting and flexing, and say “He looks good….for his age.”