Andrew Kay: Yak Yak Yak
The thirty-nine steps
T he thirty-nine steps start today. I have just thirty-nine days left of being in my fifties. It’s a somewhat daunting thought really and in many ways surprising. There were moments of late when I thought I might not get there at all.
In Guernsey a visit to a beautiful farm resulted in me spending several days in isolation on an intensive care ward with a nurse constantly at the foot of my bed. Scary stuff, not the nurses, they were nice. It did bring home that sense of one’s own mortality, as I lay there covered in wires and tubes and surrounded by things going bleep and ping. Having no real experience of hospital wards I was more than out of my depth and if I were one for making new year resolutions that that would most likely be mine “I resolve not to spend my time in a hospital bed”.
I don’t make resolutions though as they are the source of so much disappointment.
So thirty-nine days left of fiftydom – what to do? Do I have a bucket list? Not really, I have been lucky enough in my life to do so many of the things that I wanted to do. I have sung backing vocals on albums that went on general release. I have written published fiction. Had a play ‘what I wrote’ performed. Eaten in some of the finest restaurants in the world – and some of the worst. Travelled extensively for both business and pleasure. Made TV programmes in which I both created the formats and presented them. Sung in choirs, cycled up mountains (a long time ago), hosted events, held auctions, bathed in oceans and in rivers, skated on lakes, been reverential in churches, cathedrals and temples, laughed, cried, been drunk and been sober too.
There have been so many highs and some notable lows too. I never ever again want to wake up crying in a telephone box on Fleet Street London. I never ever want to drink unpasteurised milk and I have no desire to see again the show Return To The Forbidden Planet, please, never that!
So what do I want from my next decade, the scary sixties? Well to be honest I am pretty happy to go on the way I have been doing, embracing what life throws at me as it tends to do, full on in the face or the belly. Apart from a few brick bats it has done me little harm so far and to be frank, although I enjoy having a good moan about some the stuff hurled at me, I rather enjoy it. Life without challenges would surely be a drab affair?
So bring it on! What can I say? Yes or perhaps no even. Maybe that should be my tenet, Andrew Kay’s decade of saying no. The thing is, I live in fear of saying no. I am terrified of missing out on an experience that might be good in some way, exciting, fulfilling, enlightening – oh how I crave just a little enlightenment now and again.
This approach to life has certainly been exciting. Saying yes has led me down some very pretty paths and some rather dark ones too. I have embarked on affairs of the heart that were inevitably doomed but certainly worth the journey. I regret none of them and value them all. I have been hurt but I have no doubt hurt too.
Along the way I have met people who have coloured my world, some of them come and then go, others have become the constants in my life. Thank you to them all, those who have glanced at it and drifted away again and those who sail with me on this rather extraordinary journey.
As for regrets, well Mr Sinatra’s view is somewhat simplistic. A few? No, a lot, of course there are regrets. I regret not having looked after my body better. If I had I might be a thinner and fitter creature than I am today. I regret not having learned how to play the piano or how to ski. I wish my teeth were in a better state than they are and I regret throwing away all those fabulous clothes that I bought from places like Bodymap and World’s End when I was younger and slimmer. I suspect that if I had stayed fit and slim I might never have thrown them away, although the idea of me walking along Western Road in pirate gear or white cotton jersey dungarees with legs that reached barely past my knees is a pretty scary thought.
Dwelling on what I might have done though is really not my style. I’m far more likely to be looking at what I might do next. So if you have any thoughts, positive ones that is, then feel free to let me know. I might be somewhat limited by my physical state but otherwise I will give all sensible ideas my consideration – and I might even learn how to say no.
