Life is like a roll of toilet paper

Life is like a roll of toilet paper – Long enough to get the job done, but short enough to make you wonder if you’re using it wisely.

From the wild ride of youth to the relative growth felt during adulting and parenthood, I’ve recently been warned that the next chapter in life for me could be ‘maturity’, which seemed unlikely.

But times are changing.

At the weekend I bought, (without much thought), an overpriced (but 75% reduced) jacket from a discounted rail in a garden centre.

You can see the delight in my face as I posed for the photo in light of the lacking full length mirror this heavy investment required.

I think this is the precise moment I was warned about.

Clothes shopping, on Sundays in garden centres.

I’m getting old, but I’m not ready.

Put simply, there would have simply been no time for garden centres, cotton traders or pondering over discounted fuchsias back in my drinking years, so where did it go wrong?

Sunday mornings used to be much more exciting.

Swimming lessons with hangovers, arguments with the wife, being escorted home naked by police, losing company phones and more practical challenges like trying to get 30 miles home from Woking with no cash, cards or phone instead of 3 miles from Wokingham because I slurred at the taxi driver.

I’m clearly balls deep in my “after drinking” chapter of life, the chronicles continue.

Whilst sobriety has given me Sunday mornings, amongst other things, it’s often on these Sunday mornings whilst cycling with mates, running in the forest or eating a bacon sarnie with the wife at a garden centre that also sells clothes that I can see (and feel) how much things have changed.

I can’t believe I do the things old people do.

Who knew I’d get old.

In recent months I’ve found myself thinking much, much harder about the future life I am yet to live.

I didn’t think I’d live this long, but I have, and there is so much to do, in my new jacket.

#regatta
#greatoutdoors

Next up – Paul shares his book…..!