I Raise My Glass to Sudoku
Flash Fiction
Thank you, thank you, dear friends. Yes it’s true I never dreamt that I’d live to be a hundred. I am most grateful to you for all the trouble_ and love_ you put in to make this such a momentous event.
I’ll let you into a secret. After I retired, I was beset by a number of health issues. I rarely had a good night’s sleep, my digestive system was shot, I couldn’t walk five minutes without becoming breathless. I kept forgetting common words, did scary things like putting keys in the fridge. Going into a room to fetch something and forgetting what it was when I got there.
But the worst thing was that my bowel movements had gone haywire. I couldn’t manage without regular intakes of laxatives, natural or pharmaceutical. I beg your pardon for being crude, but what the hell! I would spend ten fifteen minutes on the toilet seat, strain myself with next to nothing coming out at the other end.
As a result, the whole day I’d feel glum and depressed, often seeming to need the toilet, but it was always unproductive. Dieticians recommended fibres, bran, beans, pulses, fruits, prunes. Hardly any joy. Doctors prescribed sennokot, bisocodyl and similar malarkey … Lots of grunts, but hardly more than a few goat’s pellets. And gas.
It was doubtless what caused all my other problems. Insomnia worst of all. You are depressed and seek solace in sleep, but when you do nod off, you end up with nightmares. I was eating badly, always had indigestion, my breath stank, I always had a sour taste in my mouth. Was prey to a number of ailments, from palpitations to perpetual fatigue. I had migraine attacks on a regular basis, and as you know there is next to nothing you can do about that. I was drinking too much, smoking more than ever. My blood pressure kept rising. I gave myself a couple of years, and given my quality of life, this did not alarm me.
Then one day, I caught a new feature in the dailies. The sudoku. For years I’ve been reading the dailies crouched on the toilet seat.
The first time, I was twenty-five minutes struggling with it, but solve it, I did. And I was so engrossed in it, I did not realise I had taken so long, but having retired, it mattered not a bit. Oh, the most interesting bit was that I had not heard a few plops, as without realising it my bowels had moved as in the old days.
The relief I experienced that day was incredible. I felt light, I mowed the lawn, and in the afternoon, as it was a warm and sunny day, I had a little snooze in the garden. I had a sound night’s sleep for the first time in three years.
I found that a good night’s sleep was instrumental in tempering my depression. Feeling less depressed, I enjoyed my food more, with my digestive system improving. I took more exercise, felt I didn’t need to drink so much.
My bowels were moving like when I was a teenager. In fact I felt a whole lot younger. Led a more active life, and outlived the two more years I had given myself when I reached sixty.
I raise my glass to Sudoku.
