This is what seventy looks like here

This is my neighbour Knut. The seventy-plus-year-old I mentioned in my most recent Weekly Telegraph article. On a daily basis, as I sit in front of my computer staring out the window, I get tired just looking at his constant physical activity. Here he is shovelling snow up onto his trailer before driving it off somewhere - only five minutes away - to dump it. He’s been doing this all week and he's hardly made a noticeable difference yet. Still, he keeps going. For most of the day.

I, on the other hand, was rather pleased with myself for clearing snow from the three steps at the front door on Monday. Not the full width of the steps, you understand, just enough to allow one person use them without slipping. And god was I pissed the next day to find a new centimetre of white powder covering my handy work. Goodness knows how Knut felt. It didn’t stop him loading his trailer though. He has also cleared much of the snow off his roof. We’re presuming that as the house is only five years old it has been made strong enough to support the metre deep snow lying on top of it. 

This is why, in another couple of months, Knut will have a pristine lawn resplendent with flowers in front of his house. He'll probably continue to be active until he's 100 too. We, on the other hand, will still be looking at the remnants of the darn snow hill wondering if it will last until July as it lies in the shade. I can only imagine what Knut thinks of us and our lazy, young (relatively), foreign ways of sloth. He'll be looking at our eyesore too, poor man. I wonder if he'll be tempted to offer us a loan of his trailer.