Michael Morpurgo

Diary – 31 May 2018

By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises you any more. Striving gives way to coping. Drop a pencil and it rolls under the sofa. What you have to do is think about the best way to find it and pick it up. Problem. Do you get down on your knees and reach in under, which of course means you will have to get up again, or do you simply push the sofa away? Such problems don’t really bother you. You cope with it. You don’t reflect on growing decrepitude. It has been so slow coming, you have hardly noticed. Push the sofa away. Bend slowly, pick it up. Done. Straighten up. No one was watching. That’s good.

Even an unwelcome medical diagnosis does not surprise you. You cope because you have to. You know it’s what happens to us all. You’ve been lucky all these years. Now it’s your turn, stuff happens. That’s life, you tell yourself, or the other thing. Friends and family much younger have been ill, and suffered long; some have fallen off the perch younger than I am now. I’ve been a lucky old parrot. Just trust in the doctors and the nurses, lie there, forget the whirring and clunking of the machine, those life-prolonging rays beaming into you — thank God for Marie Curie — close your eyes and think of… well, not of poor old England, not at the moment. Too depressing. Think of something positive. I know. Marie Sklodowska-Curie was French and Polish, wasn’t she? Think how wonderful and beneficial it has been over the centuries, this open flow across borders of people and ideas and science and culture — yes, and trade. Think how hopeful that was for all of us.

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