# An Introduction to GROMEN



## Divus

*Introducing GROMEN stories*
‘What on earth is GROMEN/’ I hear them say. Well, it stands for Grumpy Old Men. 

I am one of those who still has his marbles but much of whose anatomical architecture is falling apart. I am beginning to feel like a Victorian terraced house which was built for a different era by slipshod workmen to a housing standard which has always been just above squalid level. There are tens of thousands of such houses in London although most of them have now being gentrified. A bit like Botox for buildings. 

In truth many of them can still look good as long as you don’t take off the lower layers of wallpaper. Unfortunately there is never any space left outside to park the car and absolutely nowhere to hitch the horse. Anyway the neighbours would want you to collect the dung. Mumbling about fertiliser for roses doesn’t get you anywhere these days. There was never any indoor plumbing when these houses were built but similarly much of my plumbing doesn‘t work these days either. No amount of PVC pipework is going to fix me but at least with an old building and connected up pipework one no longer has to go down in the middle of the night to fill the bucket in the brick shed at end of the garden.

I am indebted to Robert Levin. He started a thread about turning sixty and that gave me the idea to write some GROMEN stories. You know Grumpy Old Men tales. (_By the way, there is no money in it, Robert, so there is no future in asking for commission because ten percent of nothing is still nothing._) I think Wisepeepee has something to do with my idea as well, because after reading one of his epistles I realised that I could not understand a word he had written and yet he obviously has a following. So there but for the grace of ‘whomever‘ (no blasphemy on this thread you note) go I. Anyway I am over seventy so I am excused for being a ‘silly old man‘. Few intelligent youngsters below the age of 36 are going to read these ramblings anyway. Women aren’t mentioned in the title. 

I can still see from my right eye whilst wearing glasses. I can still hear if I ignore the tinnitus. I can’t smell anything but I can taste, which means I no longer have to pay extra for a bottle of wine with a fine bouquet. I can touch, I can feel vibrations, I can hold my breath for about 15 seconds without holding my nose. I just about manage to sprinkle the pan providing I have been taking my Finisteride and Tamulosin. The first drink of the day must always be Regulan - that‘s high fibre husk to keep me regular otherwise straining brings another risk of anguish. Last thing at night it must be the tablets - ‘keep taking them’ is the mottoo at all times every day from now until ever more finally arrives.

I am covered in moles. I am bow legged, I ache to hell every morning when I get up and the weekly Pilates exercises make me groan more by doing them than not doing them - if you catch my drift. At least I can still do them - or rather most of them. ‘Work within your limits’ has to be part of the Pilates creed. (_I forgot to mention I am bald and grey just in case some frustrated woman was reading this)._

I can still ride my horse despite my wobbly balancing mechanisms but falling off is getting more and more painful. My two dogs have made dog walking so much easier because neither of them, the terrier bitch and the Rottie dog, ask to go out for walkies as they used to do, when they too were in their prime. Jenna never did hoist one leg and Rockie can’t balance anymore after his cruciate operation. Mind you the little bitch is over a hundred by human standards so she is always forgiven for forgetting herself any way. Rockie well, bless him, most people are frightened of the breed. 

Also please do no expect literary masterpieces crafted by an expert. I felt a little inferior over in *.org *where those guys seem to strive for excellence and accuracy all the time. Forgive an old man his grammatical grumbles and put it down to his age. Anyway I could claim that I can’t work the computer could I not! Sorry Guys, literary style according to the rules has long gone - I write to make you laugh, smile, cry, rant, rave, remember, weep, moan, shout, bang the table, clench your fist - any emotion you care to express but please just ’feel’ something. Besides if speaking with a plumb in one’s mouth has gone out of fashion why must we write with a plum between our fingers? 

There will be the odd puzzle concealed in my words from time to time. Probably I will have written something obtuse. It will be for you to work it out. It won’t be funny if I have to explain it. 

Robert started mumbling about sex. Well that’s a long lost dream. I did notice that amongst the FAQs and rules that I must not write about sex. Presumably the organisers of the forum have not read Lady Chatterley. With me it would only be a memorial anyway. The sort of women who’d want to do it with me, I wouldn’t want to do it with, even if I could, which I don’t think I can.. And those that I might gaze at and fancy well, its best I think of them as a best friend’s daughter or something equally untouchable. I do not have family although I do have one brother. He is a bit of a cynic really. The two of us left together could bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down or am I confusing that wall with the Wailing Wall? There is no son to call me Father - _(yeah I know, work it out_) - neither is there a daughter so no one is ever going to humour Granndad or, even worse, Grate Granndad - _(that‘s possible, do the sums_). You folks are going to have to read my rubbish. Do a good deed for humanity.

Now I have a problem - what’s this epistle, fiction or non-fiction?

PS I have re-read it about 4 times I can’t see it anymore - take it as it is. Call management if you must.


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## The Backward OX

I’m going to enjoy your stories. I’m in the same age group, and reading of some of your trials and tribulations makes me aware I’ve been very lucky, so far.

Good for you that you can still ride. I just hope you’re not riding to hounds or you’ll incur my displeasure.

You can so too write about sex. You just have to be a _cunning linguist_ about the way you word it, or you use a disclaimer at the top of your post to warn the kiddies off.

To use a disclaimer, you type a [, then ‘disc’ (without the tadpoles), then ], then your warning*, then another [ followed by a / followed by ‘disc’ again (again without the tadpoles) and a final ]. I think.

*for example - *Contains Anglo-Saxon terminology*

Finasteride and Tamulosin do the same job. You shouldn’t need both. And unless you’re getting them on the NHS they’re too expensive anyway. Prazosin’s the el Cheapo version that does the same job. Or you can try cutting out coffee and see what happens.

Back to sex: everything eventually comes back to sex: you shouldn’t give up hope. I live in expectation of winning lotto. There’s a $50million jackpot next Tuesday. I have as much chance as anybody - if I remember to buy a ticket. Then we’ll see how quickly the ladies coming swarming around.


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## Divus

Curmudgeon
Speaking from bitter experience, Tamu & Fini work in a slightly different way and, dare I say this, my own symptoms have eased by taking both as per doctor's instructions.     Here in my part of the world Old Has Beens get their medications free.

As for winning a million dollar jackpot, well, just think it through.  There you would be with all the money in the world to do exactly what you wanted to do, only to find you can no longer do it as once you did it.     You would also steadily come to realize, slowly but surely, that the day when the lights go out is not that far away.   You won't have time to spend the sponduliks.        Inevitably you will be leaving leave all that lovely dosh behind - and you have only just got it.       

As for other, there is nothing worse than hearing the words: "Do it again" and realizing you can't.    Just be grateful you still can remember.


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## Olly Buckle

> Now I have a problem - what’s this epistle, fiction or non-fiction?



Or possibly a thread in the "Befuddled" user group.


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## The Backward OX

Why that man keeps referring to we lot as befuddled escapes me. I'm still as sharp as a tack.


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## qwertyman

First of all never read the rules. Where would the fun be if you read the instructions before assembling the stairlift.




			
				divus said:
			
		

> - I write to make you laugh, smile, cry, rant, rave, remember, cry,





			
				divus said:
			
		

> (yes I do remember cry, from three words ago) weep, moan, shout, bang the table, clench your fist - any emotion you care to express but please just ’feel’ something.


 
Ok you got me on laugh and moan and on the principle of take two get one free...I’ll take...wait a minute which Robert Levin are you talking about?

For a quick age-check I think I am older than Olly but definitely younger than Ox. 
A fun read, I’ll look forward to more...
Hoping you survive the night.
qwerty


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## Divus

'Befuddle'  meaning by Collins: 'to stupefy with alcoholic drink'.

I would have you know that I can write like this when I am sober.    I have tried writing when inebriated but find that what I have written is not reprintable prose.  That's the great thing about a nice bottle of Alsace Gewurtztraminer, vendanges tardives, drunk late in the evening.    The wine is too rare for most casual wine drinkers but for the cognescenti, it slips down so smoothly and those 13 percents give one a little buzz.  The best thing is I don't have to do anything other than sip it and its works on me all by itself.   Later one climbs up to bed and quickly drops off into a little doze.        There is no problem of should I?, can I?, will I, do I want to? or even is it on the cards?    It is merely a question of laying one's weary head on a soft pillow and letting it all go.

As you can read, I survived the night.        Now I've got to survive today   .


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## The Backward OX

I’m not befuddled but I am befused. Sorry, bewildered. Not bewitched or bothered, just bewildered. Or perhaps confused.

See, the time stamp on Querty’s post, in Eastern Australian Time, says Sunday, 7.08 p.m. Seeing as he lives in the Emerald Isle (trust me, he does) that makes it (with the hour cribbed for daylight saving) nine hours behind me, or Sunday 10.08 a.m. But he has said, “Hoping you survive the night.” At a pinch that would be okay, except that you now muddy the water by saying, at four minutes before midday your time, that you have in fact survived the night. I just cannot see where a night fitted in, in between ten ack emma and noon. 



Vendanges tardive, indeed. Why cannot you say late harvest like everyone else?


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## garza

Why this pre-occupation with parts breaking? I could give you a similar catalog, but I'd rather talk about the parts that, at 70, still work as they should. 

My mind may not be sharp as a tack, but it continues to be capable of absorbing, understanding, and manipulating new ideas. My reflexes are as good as they were 50 years ago. My lady friend in Cayo does not complain. I still swim in the ocean every day and especially enjoy the days when we have a squall line moving in, kicking up enough surf to make playing in the water interesting. It's true my right ear is no longer useful for hearing, but the tinnitus gives me something to listen to whenever I pay attention to it. I can still hike in the Maya Mountains and ride at my friend's ranch in the river valley and spend a full day with a farmer in his field doing whatever needs to be done. The only medication I take is one gram (1,000mg) of aspirin daily to try and head off another stroke. 

My guess is that each of you who have named all your ills could make a similar list of what works and what you can do, despite the accumulation of years. Dead is forever, so let's keep our minds focused on living.


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## The Backward OX

Yeah, right.


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## garza

Yes. Right, as in 'right on'. A man I know in Cayo is over 80, confined to a wheelchair. He runs the business he started over 50 years ago and is active in everything that happens. He helps organise community events like September Celebrations and is an enthusiastic worker in his party's political affairs. 

If you are in a coma, bedridden in a nursing home just waiting for the beeping to stop, then you have an excuse to focus on the negative. Otherwise keep living and doing all that you can do and don't worry about the rest.


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## The Backward OX

Whoa, there, Tiger, I'm okay. In fact, we're prolly all okay, considering. But I can't help remembering Carson Robison and his Life Gets Tee-Jus, Don't It? :wink:


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## Olly Buckle

I am mostly with you Gaza,if you are in a coma, bedridden in a nursing home just waiting for the beeping to stop, I would say you have an excuse not to focus on things, never focus on the negative too hard though. I allowed myself one little rant here. When Ox told me he would rather have what I have than what he does I explained in some, not full, detail what this involved, he changed his mind. A whingeing pom in Aussie clothing.


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## The Backward OX

Befuddled is right, for certain people.


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## garza

Life only gets tee-jus if you let it. A few years ago I interviewed the team that came in last in La Ruta Maya, the Belize River Challange. It's a canoe stage race down the whole length of the Belize River. A member of the team explained why they did no better. 

'We got bored paddling,' he said, 'so we just drifted for a while. Then that got boring, so we paddled for a while.'

They were offended when I suggested that perhaps canoe racing isn't their sport, and pointed out that the teams that did well kept up a steady 50 to 60 strokes a minute for hour after hour and came back year after year to do the same. The losers let the days get tee-jus because they lacked interest in the river and the race. 

It's when we lose interest in life itself that life gets tee-jus.


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## The Backward OX

You need to watch those tense changes if you have any aspirations to writing fiction.


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## Divus

Garza I think it could be I don't like paddling. Maybe I did too much rowing as a kid.

or it could be  just the rubber gloves.


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## Divus

Quote  'yeah , right'  
                           Unquote

equals : 
         game + set  =  match


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## Divus

The Ox,

Ain't this internet thingie marvellous. - and I didn't have to change my watch once.


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## garza

The Backward Ox - By tense change I believe you mean 'isn't their sport' rather then 'wasn't their sport'. That's a holdover from broadcast news writing, and the interview I did was for a local radio station. Using the present tense in a situation like that keeps the topic sounding fresh. If it were fiction I would still use 'isn't' but would have it as part of the dialogue. 'Maybe canoeing isn't your sport,' I said.

Divus - You lost me. What game? What set? What match? Elucidate please. Also, what rubber gloves?


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## Divus

Dear Ox   - Sir, 

You got me into this .
I am a new boy.

Now help me get out of it. ................................please


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## The Backward OX

Divus said:


> Dear Ox - Sir,
> 
> You got me into this .
> I am a new boy.
> 
> Now help me get out of it. ................................please


 
The great *Sam W*, as Irish as Paddy’s pigs, and a reasonable writer to boot, long ago provided an answer to this very conundrum. He said that everyone forgets what they said, five minutes after they said it. This being so, all you need do is ignore the ramblings of that _extremely rob_us_t_ ex-journalist, and by the time of elevenses* it will all be like so much water under the bridge.


There are of course other solutions, but my oatmeal, with brown sugar and cream, beckons, and I need to *HALT*


*oops, correction for GMT + 1 hour - by the time you throw back the covers and stagger to the bathroom.


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## Olly Buckle

Divus said:


> Dear Ox   - Sir,
> 
> You got me into this .
> I am a new boy.
> 
> Now help me get out of it. ................................please



We can tell you are a new boy, appealing to Ox's 'better nature'. (Where is the amused-sarcastic smiley?)


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## Olly Buckle

> 'We got bored paddling,' he said, 'so we just drifted for a while. Then that got boring, so we paddled for a while.'
> 
> They were offended when I suggested that perhaps canoe racing isn't their sport, and pointed out that the teams that did well kept up a steady 50 to 60 strokes a minute for hour after hour and came back year after year to do the same. The losers let the days get tee-jus because they lacked interest in the river and the race.



Isn't that simply a lack of Protestant work ethic? I bet the other team got bored too, but the old work ethic drove them on.
What is this life so full of care
We have no time to drift in canoes and stare?


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## Olly Buckle

The Backward OX said:


> Befuddled is right, for certain people.





> 'Befuddle'  meaning by Collins: 'to stupefy with alcoholic drink'.



Not me then, not allowed to drink, mofotil puts too much strain on the liver.


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## Divus

5 minutes you say - phew.    I've been waiting longer than that already.    

For the moment I thought I was going to have to explain digitalis penetratis whilst the world and his wife  was watching.

That'll teach me.


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## qwertyman

garza said:


> Life only gets tee-jus if you let it. A few years ago I interviewed the team that came in last in La Ruta Maya, the Belize River Challange. It's a canoe stage race down the whole length of the Belize River. A member of the team explained why they did no better.
> 
> 'We got bored paddling,' he said, 'so we just drifted for a while. Then that got boring, so we paddled for a while.'
> 
> They were offended when I suggested that perhaps canoe racing isn't their sport, and pointed out that the teams that did well kept up a steady 50 to 60 strokes a minute for hour after hour and came back year after year to do the same. The losers let the days get tee-jus because they lacked interest in the river and the race.


 
I know which canoe I'd rather be in. Tee-jus is a nice way to drift down the rio.

I had a canoe once, I couldn't work out which was the front and which was the back...I kept chickens in it, they didn't seem to mind.


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## garza

Olly Buckle - The Protestant work ethic has never infected many Belizeans. It's one of the things I love about living here. You will often hear a Belizean say 'right now' or 'soon come'. Both expressions have roughly the same meaning as the colloquial use of 'mañana' in Mexico, but without the same sense of urgency.

The Backward Ox - Ex-journalist? Not quite yet. And no more robust than the rest of you if you'd talk about what you yet can do and not about what's broken. 

Divus - Now, what were you saying? It's slipped my mind.

quertyman - What you say makes me suspect that canoe racing is not your sport either. At least you've found a productive use for the canoe. A lady in the village raises chickens. I was at her house Friday and a few of them were pecking around my feet. She told me she'd named them 'Stew, Roast, Bake, Fry, and Barbeque'.


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## qwertyman

Foul play!


Just to stop Olly saying it - but it probably won't.



Sigh, I'm not proud of this post.


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## Divus

It might be better to say, at this time of grave financial crisis in Europe, that:

_'Protestants have a tendency to have a work ethic - providing they have a job'._ 

Otherwise we hang around, drink beer, doze, soak up the rays, gossip, watch football  -  just as men are won't to do.

We were never infected with a work ethic, we were inflicted with it.


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## The Backward OX

garza said:


> A lady in the village raises chickens. I was at her house Friday and a few of them were pecking around my feet. She told me she'd named them 'Stew, Roast, Bake, Fry, and Barbeque'.


 
Coming as it does from a certain provincial Spanish - _barbacoa_ - one would expect the accepted English spelling to be 'barbecue.' More so as the pronunciation of the syllable 'que' - again, to go with the Spanish connection - can only be 'keh.' *¿*


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## garza

The Backward Ox - Just a bit of my Mississippi cultural heritage shining through. I grew up seeing signs like 'Dominic's Bar-B-Q' and frankly I've never thought of the word as having an official spelling. You are correct. Oxford says 'barbecue'. As we said back in the days that were, 'ain't dat sump'm?' 

The shame of it is that I have no idea where to get real barbecue these days. On weekends, especially, you'll see barbecue stands all over. Anything that's cooked on a grill and slathered with Kraft Barbecue Sauce is sold as barbecue. 

When I was a kid every black family and many white families, including mine, had its own carefully guarded secret recipe. The sauce was in two parts. There was a marinade for soaking the meat for three or four days, and a braising sauce used to lightly coat the meat just before it was cooked. The meat would be put first into a big iron skillet or Dutch oven for just a minute, turned rapidly several times, then coated again and put on the grill. A cover of some sort was put over the meat and not removed until the cook judged the meat was done. The most popular grill both then and now is the split 55 gallon drum, hinged and vented. 

Only hardwood charcoal, and not the store-bought kind, should be used to make the coals. The bags of charcoal in the supermarket have chemical additives that give the meat a funny taste. You have to drive out into the country and find the old man who makes charcoal for a living and guarantees it will burn slow and true.


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## Olly Buckle

My brother taught agriculture and kept a couple of sheep on the school field, when the lamb was born the kids christened it "Chop". One August bank holiday he left them out on the field for the long weekend, a local old lady reported him to the RSPCA for leaving them out all night, he said "The RSPCA man said they were the best kept sheep he had ever seen and we adjourned for tea in the shed, I don't know what she thinks Welsh hill farmers do?"


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## The Backward OX

Have girl friends named Dolly and Lavernia and Mary Dog?


Baaaaaaa


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## Baron

The Backward OX said:


> Have girl friends named Dolly and Lavernia and Mary Dog?
> 
> 
> Baaaaaaa


 
Ah yes...  Australia; where the men are men and the sheep are nervous.


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## Divus

Fellas , you are drifitng off track. The mod will be watching. You must come back to considering old age, sex, debauchery, fallibility, performance, fact.


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## The Backward OX

Divus, I've sent you a Private Message.


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## Divus

The Ox,   I got the message and I think I have done what you suggested,       

Ta very much


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## Olly Buckle

I am intrigued, did it involve old age, sex, debauchery, fallibility, performance,etc.


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## Divus

As you might expect of older, mature gentlemen, a little of all of those things - in the mind if not in the flesh.

Merely to remember can be a delight, one will always forget the price which was paid in whatever currency it was rendered.


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## Reese

I like your peice.

This is something I tell anyone who puts writing before me, and that is to be precise.

I can see how you allude to something more, but considering you have only put before us what we see, then it's a little weak.

I feel as though there is an underlying anger here. Do you believe so? If so, elucidate us, otherwise, keep going.

I like it. I would like to read more.


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