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up for. The Trouble came upstairs again. “I can’t make up my mind between off white and avocado,” I said, giving the walls a good coat of looking at prior to the exorbitantly-priced coats of paint Hughes & Son would soon be applying to them. “We’re having it peach,” she said.
    I had to go back down again as I’d no excuse to be standing there now she’d sorted out the colour scheme but when she came down again I went back up again. An hour later, an hour’s racking my brains, and I still didn’t know what I’d gone up for.
    The Trouble came back upstairs. I was just about to tell her I was having trouble with peach and would she compromise with primrose when she suddenly stopped and stood there, looking thoughtful. “Now what did I come up here for?” she said.
    “You must be getting old,” I said, and went back downstairs.
     
    ****
     
    December 14 2006. BLIND MEN.
     
    There aren’t too many advantages in being old, and many disadvantages, but one of the few benefits that we coffin-dodgers have over younger people is that we can get away with things a lot easier as allowances are made for our advanced years. “Oh take no notice of him, it’s his age,” they say, in that condescending way, never for a moment suspecting that the artful pensioner might sometimes be using the cover of his age in order to get away with something that he otherwise might not have. Such as Atkins and I do when we play one of our daft games; because I’m quite sure we wouldn’t be tolerated or excused as easily if, say, we were in our thirties. Take the game of ‘Blind Men’ we often play, and which we have never yet failed to walk away from without insult or assault being visited upon us, where similar antics from younger people would probably bring down the wrath of the public on them. In fact I remember playing a version of Blind Men as a child and often receiving a slap round the ear-hole for my pains. However the adult version of the game is a bit more refined, as indeed are Atkins and I.
    We usually travel to Stockport or Buxton, and Manchester on one occasion, to play it, as we’re too well known in our own little town and probably wouldn’t get away with it so easily.
    It all went off as usual. Armed with white sticks we stood at opposite sides of a busy street, facing inwards, as though waiting for someone to help us across the road. And as usual someone soon did. Quite often a helpful man or woman will stop to help me before one stops to help Atkins, or vice versa, and when this happens, and for our game to work properly, we have to take delaying action by engaging our knight in shining armour in conversation, such as “You’re quite sure there’s nothing coming are you, because I wouldn’t like to be knocked over at my age?” or “Can you hold on a minute I’m going to sneeze, now where did I put my hankie?” That sort of thing.
    However today we were fortunate enough to get a willing helper at the same time. Holding onto our guides by the arm we each set off on our journey across the road, tapping our white sticks on the road the while, then, when we met in the centre of the road we suddenly shrugged off our helpers, brandished our white sticks high in the air as though they were swords, and took up fencing stances.
    “On guard, you French scum,” I demanded of Atkins.
    “Hah! You weel soon feel the cold steel of my sword you Eenglish peegdog!” retorted Atkins.
    Then we started fencing with our white sticks. It stopped the traffic of course, as usual, and a sizeable crowd soon gathered.
    Actually we’re getting quite good at it now; not to the standards of Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Errol Flynn maybe but certainly as good as Kevin Costner when he was Robin Hood, so we put on quite a decent show. After a couple of minutes or so of cut and thrust we simply packed it in and just walked away together chatting amiably, lest we got into trouble with Plod.
    Atkins once suggested that after a minute