I moved to New Zealand at the venerable age of fifty. Some say that fifty is the new thirty, but only if they are innumerate or refuse to accept the concept of linear time.
I certainly didn't feel like thirty when I stepped off that plane from Edinburgh but I think it's fair to say that my body was in pretty good working condition, give or take a missing testicle or two. I wish I could say the same now.
The first thing to go was my left shoulder. I leant back from the driver's seat of my car to retrieve a bag from the back seat. Something popped and when you're my age and hear that sound, you're best to freeze and to check your extremities from the outside in. I found that I couldn't lift my left arm beyond elbow height. Luckily for me, that's not the arm I use to hail barmen or to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf at work. So, it took me a day or two to drag myself to the physio. He poked and prodded me like a farmer inspecting a bullock at a country mart.
After a few non-productive sessions and a scan, he announced that I had 'frozen shoulder', which I took as code for 'we haven't a bloody clue."
Next to go was my right knee. I remember descending the escalator at Auckland Central station and being in a hurry to catch a soon departing train. I tripped on one of the steps. It was so slight and my recovery so balletic and graceful that none of the other commuters even noticed. But a pain similar to being stabbed shot through my knee. This time the physio was more on the ball, or patella to be more precise. She diagnosed some arthritis and warned that this was a ticking time bomb that would lead to canes and Zimmer frames in later life.
It's unpleasant to lie on a bench in a cold and clinical treatment room, looking at posters of fit and healthy athletes and having your future mapped out to in such depressing tones.
She kindly put it down to all the football I played in my twenties and not the extra twenty kilos of weight that the knees have had to support since I stopped playing football.
At this point you might be assuming that these physio visits were not only treating but costing me an arm and a leg. Thankfully, New Zealand has an excellent system in place for such events. This is a country famed for its physical sport and outdoor endeavours.
Accidents are common, so to avoid the leisure and sports industries from being inundated with law suits an Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) was set up. This is funded through taxes and pays for treatment when you have an accident. The only issue is that you have to have had an accident to avail of it. “Tripped on the stairs at the station and twisted my knee” will generally pass muster. But “woke up in the morning with a sore ankle” is going to be refused.
This happened to me when my left knee popped. It clearly got upset that his right compatriot was getting all the attention from the pretty physio. I woke up one morning with a pain in my knee that wasn’t there before I got out of bed. When I filled out my ACC claim form at the physio, I had to use the full power of my imagination to conjure up an excuse that had elements of truth layered with exaggeration. Dreaming of scoring the winner at Highbury didn’t make it onto the form.
My back, however, is the most regular offender. It first paid a painful visit about three years ago and has popped back about once a year since. On that first occasion, I was seated at the station and stood up to walk towards an incoming train. My back suddenly went into spasm and I crawled, almost on my hands and knees towards the carriage.
I spent the morning on the boardroom floor at work with a lap top nestled on my chest. Luckily, I was able to procure a lunchtime physio appointment (at this stage I’m such a regular customer, I clearly have gold card status) and the application of some strange smelling ointments and some acupuncture did the trick. I was able to shuffle home that night and within a week or so, I was back to normal.
For the purposes of my ACC form on this occasion, I was able to reference an incident two days earlier, when I helped carry an 80kg table top up two flights of stairs. I probably didn’t bend my knees properly on this occasion, but then I was probably scared of doing more damage to them at the time.
You would think I would have learned from this experience, but two of my subsequent issues with my back can also be traced to lifting things that a man of my age should be avoiding.
New Zealand is, of course, an active place to live. Part of the attraction of living here is the great outdoors. Hiking, swimming and generally being a sporty bloke is part of the deal.
I’ll be 58 in a month’s time. That’s an age when you tend to look towards retirement as opposed to a new career, for example. I think part of my problem is accepting this. That my body is showing the normal levels of aging and decay. Time, after all, waits for no man. When I was in my twenties, years moved like treacle, these days they race like an express train.
In the words of the great Leonard Cohen, I ache in the places where I used to play. But I’ll keep fighting, raging at the dying of the light. I’ll just be a little more careful when descending escalators and lifting anything heavier than a pint of beer.
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