Sixty one, slower hands, no interest in pretending otherwise

My hands are not what they were. Some mornings they are stiff for an hour, some days they are entirely fine, and after twenty six years I have changed how I do nearly everything to account for it. What has not gone is the part that actually matters, which is knowing what the person in front of me is doing before they have said anything about it.

I mention the hands because the alternative is to leave it out and have somebody discover it, and I have reached an age where I would rather be dull and accurate in the first paragraph.

Sixty one, west London, on my own for two years after nineteen with the same woman. She is well, we are in touch, and she is not the reason I am here. The reason I am here is that I miss the ordinary shape of it: a standing evening, somebody in the kitchen afterwards, the same person getting slightly better at something across a decade.

I am slow now in a way I would not have chosen and have come to prefer. An evening takes an evening. If what you want is something brisk and impressive, we will both be disappointed by about the third time.

Not looking for anybody who wants to be taught. Not looking for someone in their twenties, and I say that without judgement of anyone in their twenties. And not looking for a partner who wants any of this to be visible to a room, because at this point I have very little interest in being watched.