Having last week quoted the opening couple of lines from Roger McGough’s poem Here I Am it seems opportune to post the whole poem as it isn’t very long.

Here I Am

Here I am
getting on for seventy
and never having gone to work in ladies’ underwear

Never run naked at night in the rain
Made love to a girl I’d just met on a plane

At that awkward age now between birth and death
I think of all the outrages unperpetrated
opportunities missed

The dragons unchased
The maidens unkissed
The wines still untasted
The oceans uncrossed
The fantasies wasted
The mad urges lost

Here I am
as old as Methuselah
was when he was my age
and never having stepped outside for a fight

Crossed on red, pissed on rosé (or white)
Pretty dull for a poet, I suppose, eh? Quite.

Now OK, one knows that here will likely be a degree of poetic licence and tongue in cheek, but it is interesting what one even might consider it important that one hasn’t done (or would have liked to have done) in a lifetime.

So what would be on my list of things I’ve never done, and feel I want to have done? Hmmm … well … OK …

• Visit Japan, Iceland, Norway and Sweden
• Discover that I’m entitled to a coat of arms
• Had a lot more sexual partners (what a waste of the 60s & 70s not to have done!)
• Had sex in a hot, sunny hayfield
• Travelled on the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Express
• Not been depressed
• Known what it’s like to be female

Well there’s still time to tick off some of those; better get going!

You can also check out my list of 111 Bucket List Things To Do.