So many people are crazy now, it’s almost the thing to be. There are more crazies than sanes. You run into a sane now and you say, “What’s the matter with you, man? You sane ?”

Of course in the world we live in now, sanity is in the mind of the beholder. There are some out there, unbelievable as it may be, who consider me to be on the fringes of the real world, just inches away from stepping into the enchanted kingdom.

Can you believe that ?

The thing is, I don’t get out much anymore. My two outlets throughout my retired life, the gym and the hockey rink, have had their doors slammed in my face. And so here I am, feeling as isolated as a leper who’s just been pushed outside the gates of a walled medieval town, left only with a pouch of stale bread crusts.

But to tell you the truth I can see myself living out my days all alone in a ramshackle farmhouse with nothing to do except for whacking golf balls out into the wild blue yonder of an empty hayfield. In the winter I could strap on snowshoes and tramp as far out into the woods as my arthritic knees would take me.

Hopefully I’d be able to make it all the way back.

My wife, the socialite, still sometimes arranges the odd social engagement with neighbours. You know, the thing where you sit around a rickety garden table drinking beer in the still-chilly weather, trying to figure out something to say that doesn’t involve either the lockdown or our incompetent politicians. The trouble is that after almost thirty-five years of marriage my wife and I agree on even fewer matters than we did when we first took our vows. And she dislikes my opinions even more should I have the gall to voice them in public. So unless I want polite society to witness a full-on domestic dispute, I’m really left with only one option.

Smile and nod.

According to the Lion King there’s a circle of life. The first house I lived in was a bungalow with three bedrooms on the ground floor. There were four kids in my family, so my parents had one room, my oldest brother had another and my sister, the baby, had the third. My other brother and I slept in the basement That was okay; the ping pong table, my weights and the t.v. were down there with me. I could leave the basement when I wanted. My parents, unlike my wife, weren’t even afraid to present me to polite company.

I’ll probably end up on my own in a basement again. I still have my weights, the ping pong table and a t.v. down there. And the t.v. is now bigger, has high definition and gets more channels. But I don’t get out with polite company very often.

So rattle my cage when all this over. I just hope I’m presentable.

But I might not want to come out.