The Seven Ages of Man….

I have known these famous words below from Shakespeare’s As You Like It since I was a teenager at school. Today however I feel like I came close to really ‘knowing’ them.

My day started with ‘the lover’, Mark and I having a breakfast date together.

Then it moved to ‘the infant’ as I visited Women’s and Children’s Hospital. I’ve been invited by the Royal College of Neo-Natal Nurses to present a workshop on stress management. Today was my visit to their workplace to get a better understanding of what pressure our young nurses are under. Not being able to have a baby myself, it was challenge to say the least, just to enter a ward with just 6 babies, very sick babies. All premature, around 23 weeks, all around a few days old. And I was up close. Very close. I left with an overall admiration for all the medical staff.

And this afternoon, to almost the last stage, second childishness, as I met with the Palliative Care nurse to talk about mum’s future care.

Off for a glass of wine now and, as Shakespeare said, “Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.”!!

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. and then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.