Here They Are:

* The ability to lose things, animal, material and imaginary!

* The ability to get the wrong end of the stick!

* The ability to avoid winning any raffles, games, lotteries, hearts, or even coming as high as second!

* The ability to lodge oneself up the noses of all around me!

* The ability to be the only one out of 16 lads walking down the promenade at 0600hrs in the morning, who gets bitten by the lone wandering mongrel dog that attacked just me!

* The ability to be injured and immobile, and still fall off of the hospital trolley!

* The ability to fall asleep on the bus and wake up at the local Bus Station depot, unsure of who got the bigger shock, him or the poor bus cleaner!

* The ability to get peoples names wrong, and/or forget peoples names on a regular basis!

* The ability to misplace hearing aids, spectacles, remote controls, memory sticks, camera, pens, and spoons!

* The ability to end up with odd socks at the launderette!

* The ability to take my 8 morning medications at night, and your 6 evening medications in the morning!

* The ability to go into a room, and forget more often than not what I went into that room for!

* The ability to ring the wrong number on the telephone!

* The ability to be completely ignored at Bank queues, Business office queues, Job Centre queues, Hospital queues, Shop counter queues, Inquiry desk queues, Café queues, and the general public when I collapse on the street!

* The ability to lose total and absolute control of all and any emissions of wind from my various orifices.!

* The ability to scare people horrendously when I smile and say ‘Good Morning’ to them!

* The ability to lipread wrongly!

* The ability to get on the wrong bus!

* The ability to bleed unexpectedly at regular intervals!

* The ability to get knocked into by pavement Cyclists and mobility scooter drivers!

* The ability to maintain my life of sorts, despite my lak of education, constant failings and depressions!

* The ability to tell the truth – this will get you nowhere, I know, it just confuses the bosses and politicians!

* The ability to want to help others – a futile quality!

* The ability to eat however much one puts on the plate!

* The ability to almost see my feet looking down passed your ever expanding bouncy belly!

* The ability to walk past a Barbers shop without noticing his prices!

* The ability to remember things from years ago, but not ten minutes ago!

* The ability to forget things that happened an hour ago!

* The ability to still enjoy using carbolic soap!

* The ability to realise that the adage ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is valid!

* The ability to realise that ‘Old age people are measured as an economic liability and a social burden!

* The ability to realise that ‘Old age is a mental attitude as well as a physical problem’!

* The ability to become a sociopath, and enjoy it!

* The ability to realise that:  When you live by yourself, all of your annoying habits are suddenly gone.

* The ability to understand what W Somerset Maugham meant by ‘An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones’

* The ability to accept and dwell in ones missed opportunities!

* The ability to fall asleep, or forget about saucepans heating food on the stove, and let them burn beyond salvation!

* The ability to erect an Ikea clothes-rack and have the first person to see it completed compliment him on his new piece of Andy Warhol art!