Many thanks for your birthday best wishes ... and now I'm having a bit of time off to recover!

I'd like to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes yesterday. Being 70 doesn't feel all that different from being 69 ... but I've decided to have a few days off from blogging to recover from all the excitement!

Don't worry ... I'll be back soon! I've still got lots of ideas to share and projects to complete.

In the meantime, here's some thoughts about reaching my threescore years and ten ...

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Psalm 90 Verse 10 (King James' Version of the Bible)

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

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Loveliest of Trees by A.E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

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Macbeth (Act 2 Scene 4) by William Shakespeare

Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.

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Seventy by David Hare

Three score and ten is it, says Jahweh
Three score and ten is all you’re allowed
After three score and ten you’re finished
Whoever you are, humble or proud

Don’t waste your breath asking for longer
Man was allotted seventy from when he began
Complain all you like, forget it, it’s official
Take it from Jahweh – seventy’s man’s natural span

Though he listens both to saints and to sinners
On this particular point, see, Jahweh is firm
“I created the world with strict regulations
And this is one I’m enforcing long-term”

Men may succumb to malfunctioning prostates
For a woman the killer inside is the breast
But for both genders obsolescence is programmed
No wonder mankind is depressed

You’re not there when the planet’s created
And you’re not there when the planet expires
You’re live like the average mosquito
Because that’s all that Jahweh requires

Jahweh picks you up and he looks at you
Having looked, he soon puts you down
Don’t imagine you’re of any significance
For him, you’re a shrug, a fancy, a frown

His joke is to make everyone different
So each one feels they have some special aim
But it’s only Jahweh making his special mischief
Because each of us ends up the same

He’s no interest in your particular pleadings
For your feeling he gives not a whit
If you suggest you deserve something better
He wipes you out and that’s it

You can choose to be burnt or be buried
Or pulled through the streets in elaborate display
Don’t fool yourself: it’s simply a means of postponing
An unending future of rot and decay

It’s hard to accept of my Nicole
Whom I loved more than any woman I knew
The idea that she too is mortal
Seems too absurd to be possibly true

Look in her eyes and see her laughter
Look in her face and see her delight
Then contemplate the indefensible system
That condemns her to go out like a light

There’s no way of accepting the arrangements
They seem devised for maximum pain
We give our whole lives to another
Then we never see them again

Face it: we’re victims of a cruel sense of humour
The only thing God truly loves is a joke
The rest of the stuff is kerfuffle
Whether you’ve lived as a bird or a bloke

Come, Nicole, come close and embrace me
Let me swim in the pool of your gaze
Forget Jahweh. Fuck him! Tell him from both of us
Seventy’s nothing these days