Ears getting bigger - and other depressing facts about ageing

OK, so age is just a number, you're as young as you feel. Yada yada. Yes, you can help feel younger (and by that I mean physically fitter and stronger) with exercise and activity, but aren't we fooling ourselves if we deny the down-sides to ageing?

I read this blog the other day about being over 50. Do pop over; Fran, the blogger, raises some hilarious questions. She also alerted me to some issues I'd never really considered, such as ears getting bigger.

What the what? While never having been called Dumbo, my ears aren't exactly small and the right one sticks out so much more than the left one I can never wear my hair up. Or when I do I have to go for the just-got-out-of-bed look, with more hair left out than is actually swept up. A look I can never quite get away with, for some reason. I think it has to be coupled with floaty clothes, and I'm more of a jeans and shirt girl.

Fran also wonders if, given that we put things in the fridge to keep them fresh, a daily stint in there ourselves might help? And really, why not? Instead of the torture of saunas and hot tubs (which, by the way, are a veritable petri dish of nasty bacteria), we could sit for an hour a day in a climate just cool enough to rejuvenate but not cold enough to cause hypothermia. Fran is looking for volunteers and I would, but my fridge shelves just aren't wide enough and I'm terribly claustrophobic!

Another depressing thing about ageing is the bounce back; or lack of really. Time was when you could bang into something or fall over (which we didn't, cause we were young) and it wouldn't usually cause massive bruising or take three weeks to recover from. Last week, I was doing a bit of gardening, and one of the large stones of my walled garden effort, wobbled as I knelt on it. I did a slow face plant into the astillbes, (what must the neighbors have thought?) grazing my knee and also my toe, on which the damn stone landed. What would once have been a couple of scabs is now a hurty knee and toe into the bargain. I can't wear closed shoes (but it's not broken) and every time I forget about my knee and kneel down, it really really hurts.

Talking about gardening, I also managed to give myself tennis elbow from excessive planting about a month ago. It has to be the gardening, as I haven't picked up a tennis racquet in about thirty years, but my tennis friends all recognize the symptoms. Unfortunately, despite rest and a ban on planting, the elbow is getting worse, not better, and a visit to the doc's in on the cards. At the moment, unless I get the angle right, I can't lift a thing. (Incidentally, the ex-Queenager laughed till she almost died at what was apparently my most English expression ever - "I think I have tennis elbow from too much gardening. I can't even lift up my tea." Seriously? I wanted sympathy, not ridicule.)

So while I may not have too many wrinkles for my age, the rest of me appears to be falling apart just the same.

Sigh.