Be Excellent To Each Other

As I drag myself ever closer to the grave, I've noticed a few things.

Apparently I'm .1 away from obese on the BMI scale, most of you have met me, I'm a svelte racing machine, right? How come as I get older but stay the same weight I creep closer to obese according to BMI...

Secondly, but most importantly, I've noticed that I have to hold things further away so I can read them. I'm going to have to get some glasses on a chain soon, and do the glasses swap depending on what I'm looking at. Plus the purple rinse and change my name to Maude.

As my 92yr old grandad said to me last year, as he was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, holding onto his walking frame, while waiting for his half a small pizza to cook.
"Getting old sucks".

I find myself forgetting words as I get older, but this seems to be a family trait and ends with Alzheimer’s, yay!

Apart from that I’m quite enjoying it. Being young sucked.

I'm only 32 so I dunno.

You seem to be having a midlife crisis. That’s definitely a sign of getting old.

I started to appreciate the benefits of the BBFC.

'Edgy' humour isn't groundbreaking or speaking truth to power or anything like that, it's just being obnoxious.

I don't know what a 'Fortnight' is, other than a period of 14 days.

If the surcharge is reasonable, I'll travel first class.

Watching my parents age is heart-breaking.

Muscle tone, isn't it?

^This^

I realised the other day I have two ex-girlfriends who are now in their sixties.

I found a couple of long lost pictures of me and my first girlfriend a few weeks ago. (I actually found the negatives but no matching photos, so I bought a negative scanner off Amazon to see what they were.)

And then I was like, fuck me, that was thirty years ago.

Also, totally punching above my weight.

I'm having to do this too and I never seem to have enough light to see the close-up stuff clearly. It's probably not helping that I'm staring at monitors all day, so when I then have to look at the serial number on a GBA cart or something, it takes me a bit of time to adjust (Or I just take a photo with my phone and look at that )

I'm also finding that I'm making more basic typing errors lately. Might be down to just being sloppy, but I think my brain gets a little mixed up sometimes. Not good when I'm the unofficial proofreader and content writer of the company.



Very much this. My Dad's had so many hospital appointments these past few years (he's at one right now in fact), that I'm just glad he's in a better state than he was last year. Mum and I had a talk about what happens when Dad dies and she wants me to move back home, which isn't happening, so that'll be a fun conversation...



Just the one in my case.

I'm never getting old.

My right knee keeps 'going'.

Never change.

We’d better make the most of this last week of Craster, people!

I have a dodgy right knee too but that's just because of an injury and then some surgery. Other than that I feel the same just more settled in myself.

Neither do I.

Fortnite, however...

I was trying to see if I could buy a new dongle for my wireless headphones for the playstation, as i'd lost my old one in a house move. I'll just look at the model number on the headphones and do a search on ebay, I thought.
Could I read the model number? Could I fuck. No amount of light, squinting, glasses on, glasses off, holding it up, moving it around, helped. In the end I had to do the same thing as you, take a photo and zoom that in.

As I get older I feel myself getting more comfortable with things. More laid back I guess.

Also, my knees are going too.

Absolutely. It's still better than the alternative though.

Just get two pairs of glasses if you need them, I was struggling a bit with close work in the same way as you guys, went for a check-up and the optician said he couldn't sort me on one prescription any more, so now I have one pair for close work and one pair for everything else - it's a bit of a ballache but I got used to it surprisingly quickly.

The two prescriptions aren't actually that far apart, so are interchangeable to an extent, but I can't read as well with the distance ones, and vice versa.

My eyesight isn't totally awful, so even with no specs on at all I can get around OK, and sort of read big things, to an extent.

Just get reading glasses in your left eye and long-sight glasses in the other. Then only one eye will be blurry at any time.

Are varifocals shit then? I'm in the same boat and know changes will be afoot at my next (overdue) eye test.

Also, my regular mention that Alzheimer's is a cunt; like a long drawn-out death of a person you love, but they're still around physically, and you don't get "permission" or sympathy to grieve the parent you've already lost.

Some people allege they've got better but a guy at work has them and the way he has to tilt his head in different directions depending on what he wants to look at put me right off.

I had varifocals as a kid (why? because who the fuck knows) and they were awful.

i'm -0.75 and -1.25 in each eye these days, I only wear my glasses all the time as if I put them down I will invariably lose them or break them. Having two pairs of glasses is a recipe for disaster.
I'll stick with squinting and swearing for a bit longer.

Varifocals were a revelation for me, particularly for driving, as I can now see the instruments and satnav clearly, and road signs and other distant objects. There's a little bit of head tilting required, but I do that without thinking now. If I'm reading for a long time, I have a pair of readers as well, but I wear the varifocals all day long now.

I'm a much calmer driver than I used to be. Dick heads don't bother me nearly as much as they used to, unless they do something really dangerous.

I think you do get a better perspective on what should and shouldn't piss you off as you gain maturity.

By the way, none of you wished me happy birthday on my 65th last month, but I'm not bothered. See? (you miserable bastards!!!!1111....)

Shite design like this doesn't help matters.

I'm almost at the age now (approaching 40) when my dad started to get sick and, and it's weighing on my mind a little bit.

I find it hard now to put up with things I don't like, which is causing problems between me and my wife.

Someone said (meant as a compliment) that the grey in my beard makes me look distinguished.

And all the music I choose to listen to is at least 10 years old, probably a lot more.

My most played album is from 2017. However, it's the (rather marvellous) Streets of Rage soundtrack, so probably doesn't count.

I have this problem at work every day. Every time I swap out a part I have to record the serial numbers and the majority are far too small to read easily, even with decent reading glasses. If there's a bar code as well I can try to scan it with the cheapo reader on my tablet, but 99% of the time it either doesn't read it, or reads another bar code close by, e.g. the part number. So, I end up taking photos and magnifying them to read the numbers, but often I have to have two or three goes at it because I can't hold the part and my phone steady enough to get a blur free image every time.

Re. Typing problems, I find this is mostly on touch screen keyboards and not helped by Android's propensity for changing perfectly good words for others of its choice and not saving the words I use regularly in its stupid dictionary.


Edit. It's not the Android spell checker, it's the one associated with the Samsung keyboard. I have to work out if I've been using it wrong.

Pro tip: turn the flash on for a steady photo.

Might have to back off from the subject a bit, but a decent camera will have enough resolution to zoom in on.

Source: Having to read serial numbers on all sorts of shite

I swapped in the Google keyboard on my S8 and it's happy to remember then suggest words that aren't in it's dictionary e.g. it'll happily give me 'fuck' rather than 'duck' when I swipe that word out.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... n&hl=en_GB

Has anyone heard/had experience of this:

Going to an NHS hospital for treatment but they run out of room at some point and transfer you to a private hospital and the NHS picks up the tab? Is this a thing?

Was it possibly an NHS hospital with a private wing? I've heard of it happening there

Yeah, not to me but it happened with my sister. Not sure of the details but I think she ended up being seen by a Bupa doc.

Note that every private doctor is also an NHS doctor.

Weirdly it was two hospitals that are literally across the road from each other.

Elderly woman goes in but get turfed out to the private hospital because she can’t go home (no one to look after her geriatricness) and the NHS hospital needs the beds. She thinks it’s all on the NHS. She then gets a bill for £11,000!

I've never heard of the patient being billed as a result. Sounds like a beaurocratic mixup.

Happened to my MIL for a knee replacement. All done in a private hospital on the NHS dime

Here I go stabbingsuing again.

not true

Really? I thought they were obligated to do NHS clinics as well as private

You might be thinking of dentists.

Nope. It might be that they’re expected to, and many do. But I have friends who are consultants and some of them do no NHS work.

One of my consultants referred me to himself once

I suppose it’s going to be context sensitive on your specialisation and who you train underneath. Most consultants work for the NHS, but quite a few leave it entirely at some point in their careers, for various reasons. Largely I suspect due to age and quality of life. One of my friends resigned from the NHS in his 30s though and said it was because he was bored shitless of all the politics

Can I resign from the UK then?