Brexit

I know that some of you will feel that this is a very serious subject and that it is wrong to make jokes about it. You’re right, of course. I would normally avoid publishing something that I know is going to put some backs up, but it’s there isn’t it: the elephant in the room, and I feel I have to tackle it. It’s not going away. If you feel strongly about it, I can only ask that you pass me by this week and come back to me next week, when normal service will be resumed…

I re-wrote this yesterday; I re-wrote it twice again today. Tomorrow it will be completely out of date. How is it that something that has dragged on for so long keeps changing so quickly? It’s like watching a very long chess match without noticing that they keep changing to Frustration (with only the clatter of the Pop-o-Matic dice to give the game away). It’s hard to keep up. There’s no point in watching the news: they’re more confused than I am. Please don’t judge me until you’ve checked the publication date – then just shake your head and sadly say ‘If only he knew…’ because clearly, I didn’t. I realise that this rather sad and watered-down little polemic is somewhat outside of my self-proclaimed remit, but, as it is impossible to ignore Brexit here, I thought I might as well chip in with my own two penn’orth…

***

So, at the risk of alienating in excess of fifty percent of you, I am going to come clean. I voted Remain. I believed then, as I believe now, that it was the correct decision. However, I also believe that I live in a democracy and that within a democracy I was outvoted, so there we are. I am a married man – I am used to it. Like getting older, Brexit is not something that I particularly want, but it is something that I will learn to live with, picking out such good bits as I can. Like rummaging through a bag of Revels and hoping to get the Malteaser.

Right, so having got that off my chest, I can move on more or less unburdened, to consider what Brexit might actually mean for you and me. As a person who knows absolutely nothing about the complexities of the whole process, I feel that I am uniquely qualified to do this. Anybody that understands it, will try to find sense in it and, let’s face it, there is none. Now, before we begin, I must admit that almost all of my statistical facts come from the BBC News website which, according to your standpoint, makes this short farrago either exceedingly biased or completely neutral. Furthermore, given that my fact-checking can be a little remiss and that I do have a disturbing tendency to believe anything I am told as complete truth, my capacity for the asinine is comprehensive. On a scale that runs from ‘Incontrovertible Truth’ to ‘Downright Lie’, I guess that the veracity of my statements must be rated somewhere in the region of ‘Wikipedia’: possibly – just possibly – within touching distance of truth, but not something that you would want to cling on to when the good ship Certainty starts to go down. Which it clearly has. Nor can I truly be so vain as to claim all of my opinions as strictly my own. My brain is a sponge. Frequently, what I espouse as my very own honestly-held opinion, turns out to be, unknown to me, a throw-away comment made by Paul Merton and shown in a compilation of all the bits from Have I Got News For You that weren’t funny enough for the original broadcast even when they were topical, some six months ago.

So, let’s fly into this head-on then. Short of having another referendum, which is actually gaining currency as I write (but with no apparent regard for whether the EU would now want us back) it appears that, like it or not, Brexit will probably happen, as it would take an Act of Parliament to stop it – and I can’t see them agreeing on that either. So, as you were… Perhaps we should begin then by looking at what I believe are our two possible modes of exit from the EU. As far as I understand it, what we are seeking is a deal that would ensure that we retain all the benefits of being an EU member, whilst incurring none of the costs – not entirely likely in all honesty – especially given that our Franco/German cousins fervently believe that they already fund all the good bits whilst we eat all the glacé cherries off the top. Anyhow, this pie-in-the-sky option is known as ‘Soft Brexit’ and is every bit as likely as Donald Trump nominating someone for high office who has not been accused of sexual impropriety.

The alternative mode of exit, as you might expect, is known as ‘Hard Brexit’. This would entail the UK leaving the EU without any sort of deal to ensure that we maintain a close working and trading relationship with the rest of Europe. This situation is considered the ideal by some and a disaster by others. Now, I remember the predicted ‘disaster’ that was the Millennium Bug: a year 2000 computer glitch that was going to plunge the whole world into darkness, bring aeroplanes crashing down from the sky and generally send the human race spiralling back into the Stone Age. I had my candles, my bottled water, my toasting fork and my thick sliced bread ready, but it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. Stuff just trundled on as it had before, civilization did not collapse, Ryanair continued to disgorge passengers at airports that were at least approximately on the same continent as the advertised destination, computers stuttered on as ever before, opening the wrong thing at the wrong time and deleting entire documents at the merest touch of the Return Key, and the prophets of doom were all left feeling just a little bit sheepish (except, it has to be said, for those who had bought one of those very expensive ‘perpetual calendar’ watches, only to discover that, thanks to unforeseen millennial circumstances, they would not be correct again until 3036, which, incidentally, would be around the time that they could expect to find the setting instructions, in the bread bin, under a vacuum-packed Naan Bread). I suspect following Brexit things will continue in much the same way as they did before it. We will see neither great loss nor great gain. We will do as we have always done: keep calm, put the kettle on and pretend that there was nothing scary in the first place. All will be well as long as it is still possible to buy fresh Greek olives, a nice wedge of Brie and a bottle of Rioja from the local supermarket. I wonder if, post-Brexit, we would be able to persuade the good vintners of Champany to market their product as ‘Fizzy French Wine’ in the UK. I’m really not certain that the possibility of a wine war is something I am prepared to lose sleep over. Honestly, if you really want something to be frightened of, please allow me to suggest that the idiot in the White House might just be a better place to start.

Let’s suppose that we decide upon a Hard Brexit; what would we do then? Would we pull up the drawbridge, suspend the ferries and brick up the Channel Tunnel? Would we refuse to eat anything that had not been boiled for weeks? Would we stop playing boules and return to ‘chucking little metal balls around on the beach’? We have to be honest with ourselves, what we really want is, one by one, the other twenty-seven member states to come to us, cap in hand, asking to join the UK.

I realise that the absence of a trade deal might mean that goods coming into the UK could become more expensive. Presumably goods leaving the UK similarly so. That being the case, so the argument goes, we may no longer be able to sell our goods in Europe at all. So why can’t we sell them here – in place of all the stuff from over there that we can no longer afford? I know, I know, it’s not that easy. I know. I just don’t know why. Anyway, I saw ‘The Bus’ during the referendum campaign and, let’s face it, we’re all going to be really rich after Brexit aren’t we…

What the fevered political hacks seem to forget is that the average human being is a fairly resourceful cove. One thing you can rely on with a human is that when an obstacle is placed in front of him/her, he/she will very quickly find a way around it. You see, now, as in 2000, I think that we will actually notice very little day-to-day difference in our lives. The government may change, but then it does that from time to time anyhow and, honestly, how much do most of us actually notice? Different faces, same lies. The TV and the newspapers will have to find other things to obsess about, and the world will continue to turn as it does today; the sun will still rise in the morning and we will continue to regret every decision we ever make almost as soon as we make it – whatever that decision may be. There is neither right nor wrong, merely the commitment to get on with things as best we can and hope that, in the long run, things will turn out for the better. It doesn’t help, I think, that the media continually refers to the whole process as a divorce, which implies, in my own very limited experience, that we will wind up not talking to one another and communicating through a third party whenever it’s our turn to have the kids for the weekend.

Now, I will admit that there has been turmoil already, but it is political turmoil, not proper strife. Politicians jostling for position, attempting to prove themselves vital to their own domestic audience – it’s not real trouble is it? Theatrical posturing and opportunistic point scoring: what politician could resist the opportunity to air his/her views on TV without being forced to defend his/herself against accusations of disgraceful behaviour towards some closet-bound skeleton of thirty years ago? And anyhow, has any of this actually affected your day-to-day life in any way, other than leaving you with the vague, uneasy feeling that you have become an audience member at some time-warp Coliseum, waiting to see which bloody gladiator will be the last man standing? (No female Gladiators: less enlightened times.) You see, all that I know about negotiation is that it requires compromise and that neither side ends up with everything they originally wanted. There can be no negotiating position from which you cannot move – that is not negotiating. Neither side is ever 100% happy with the result of a negotiated deal, but, usually, both sides are 100% happy that they have got one. How can it be possible to negotiate any deal when 50% are pre-determined to vote it down because it goes too far, whilst the other 50% are pre-determined to vote it down because it does not go far enough? Surely there comes a time when ‘possible’ trumps ‘desirable’. It is not possible to go in two directions at the same time (I know this having once been caught equidistantly between the chip shop and the pub).

One of the oddest things to have emerged over the period of the negotiations is that whilst many in the UK voted Leave on the understanding that we would be able to attain greater control over our borders and thus reduce immigration, we are now persuaded that the biggest concern we will have post-Brexit, is that we will not have enough immigrant workers in order for the economy to function. Who will work in shops, restaurants, hotels, care homes? Who will pick the fruit and veg? Who picks the fruit and veg where the migrants come from? Who used to pick it here? Who looks after their elderly and infirm? (Their family and friends? How very primitive.) I’m not certain the EU was ever actually intended to be the cheap labour equivalent of the Tesco Clubcard in the first place. Perhaps if we inhibit the activities of ‘foreign’ fruit-pickers in the UK (meaning that we would all be unable to afford our 5-a-day, consequent upon having to pay our own fruit-pickers something approaching the minimum wage) they will presumably, in turn, ban all of our students from picking their grapes and getting pissed on the proceeds.

And that’s another thing; will we even be able to visit Europe in the future? Apparently, European travel may become more difficult following Brexit. Really? When I leave the country now, I still require my passport to get wherever I am going and, ultimately, to get back again. Unless there is some sort of special provision for me alone, then I presume that the same applies to everybody else. Currently you cannot get into or out of the UK without a valid passport and that’s not going to change once we leave the EU and our passports become a different colour. (Can I make a plea here that, when we start to get our new passports, they get rid of the biometric bit – gaffer tape over it or something – as it never works for me anyway and I always end up back-pedalling out of the little electric gate thing so that I can visit the rather stern looking lady in the slightly above eye level booth at the end of the room instead.) I am fairly confident that the good people of Europe will continue to accept our freshly printed Euros in exchange for all manner of freshly minted goods and services. People used to travel quite successfully around Europe before we joined the ‘Common Market’. We all know that as human beings, when we are thrown together by circumstance, by and large we get on. We have shared experiences regardless of race and culture. When we struggle to communicate we mime and we laugh at our mutual inability to make ourselves understood. We share our sweets, show one another photo’s of our grandchildren and grimace together at our world leaders whenever they appear on the TV. One way or another, we will continue to go there and attempt to ‘educate them’ about why our way of doing things is (obviously) better, whilst ‘they’ will continue to come here to eat fish and chips, have their photo’s taken in the bucketing rain and put the jam and the cream on their scones in completely the wrong order.

In short, whether you voted Leave or you voted Remain and whatever the conclusion of the negotiations about the manner of our withdrawal, I believe that for you and I things will barely change. Our cousins across the channel will continue to be as baffled by us as we are by them and, despite the wedge that will inevitably be driven between us, we will forever be the closest of neighbours and, as long as we can speak to them very loudly and very slowly, the best of friends.

***

As ever, I find the greatest ‘gift’ that old age has actually brought to me is uncertainty: am I right? Will things really be ok? Well, I certainly hope so because there is one group of people whose tomorrows will be forever affected by our ham-fisted tinkerings of today, and they are the people who did not get the opportunity to vote at all when we exercised our great democratic right to determine the future. They are the people who will have to live that future: the young. Our young. Our future.

***

…it has just occurred to me that you may be reading this anywhere in the world and that you may not have the faintest idea of what Brexit is all about. Don’t worry, neither do we. I would also like to apologise to anyone I may have offended this week – except for Mr Trump, who definitely needs a bee up the bustle if you ask me…

***

Although I expect it is almost impossible to get hold of it now, I cannot recommend highly enough a book called ‘The Reluctant Euro – Rushton Versus Europe’ by the late, great William Rushton. Written after the 1975 referendum (in which we voted Remain incidentally) it is wildly out-of-date, wildly non-pc and yet still very, very funny. If you can get hold of a copy (it is full of wonderful illustrations so an e-reader won’t cut it, it has to be an old-fashioned paper book I’m afraid) I can only implore you to do so.

Fat

fat

I have a bike. It is not a super-lightweight racing machine with slick tyres the thickness of knife-blades. It is a cheap, heavy mountain bike with tyres like a tractor. It has, of course, never been anywhere near a mountain. It has generally been pushed, not ridden, up the gentlest of inclines by its shagged-out rider. It has never, to my knowledge, borne a thin, lycra-clad athlete. It carries a fat man in jeans. The fat man is me and it is an immutable fact that whatever I may do, I am a fat man doing it. We are irrevocably conjoined by some weird symbiosis of thought, my weight and I: Colin McQueen/Fat, like Nelson Mandela/Hope, Usain Bolt/Fast, Idris Elba/James Bond, James Blunt/Turn That Bloody Racket Off! I know I should take more exercise. I know I should lose some weight. Every expert on every TV program tells me so. Every expert on TV makes me feel bad about myself. I’ve got to be honest; the fact that the government tells me that I need to cut down on sugar, fat and alcohol is unlikely to sway me. This is the same government that tells me the health service is not in crisis, schools are better than ever before and that Brexit really does mean Brexit – whatever it is that Brexit means…

I have calculated my BMI – 25.6, which means that I am overweight. Now, I put most of this down to my height. If I was taller I wouldn’t be overweight. I have considered hanging from a doorway in order to decrease my BMI. Frighteningly, I appear to have actually shrunk by an inch over the last twenty years, although I prefer to think that my tape measure may have stretched. In fact, I still reach the same point on the garage wall – but I put that down to subsidence. I eat less than I once did and I exercise more, but I still put on weight. I don’t believe that any of this can be blamed upon a somnambulant thyroid (although, having said that, like an idiot I have just looked up the symptoms of an under-active thyroid, and I discover that I have them all). For the time being, until I can get an appointment at the doctor’s (I’m free in March if she is) I am perfectly happy to lay the blame at the door of Messrs. Cake, Gin and Chocolate. The answer is, I know, to exercise even more and eat even less. Perhaps if I exercise enough, I won’t have time to eat. Like most overweight people, I would like to lose a bit. Like most overweight people, I know that the only way to do so is to ‘do’ more and to consume less. Like most overweight people, I choose to do neither. I’m not obscenely fat, but I am of a build that allows me two choices when buying a ‘T’ shirt: something that resembles a Bedouin tent or something that looks like it has been spray-painted onto a lifebuoy. My weight dictates my behaviour: I dare not enter a swimming pool without first checking for Ahab.

You see, I have reached the age when I look at the obituaries and think, “My goodness, that’s no age,” when I used to think “Oh well, he/she had a good innings.” And I’m tired of hearing about people who were the “healthiest person I have ever met” just one day before they dropped down dead. I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn’t take up any new form of exercise once you’ve passed 50 years of age. Problem is, what do you do if your last real exercise was kiss-chase in the school playground? The real challenge when commencing a new exercise regime at my age is finishing it conscious. Like some of the medications I now take daily, one of the less desirable side-effects of exercise is death.

My mum couldn’t cook; she could burn water. Combining the correct quantities of cornflakes and milk in a bowl was, for her, a culinary triumph. But she loved a diet; the faffier and faddier the better. Meals that had to be meticulously weighed and prepared really appealed – but not for long. Unusual ingredients were always a bonus – particularly if she couldn’t find them anywhere. “I looked everywhere, but nobody had Patagonian cumquats, so I bought a pie.” I remember her doing a diet in which she ate nothing but grapefruit. Presumably you lose weight because the only thing you are allowed to eat is completely inedible. One of the true benefits of taking statins is that I no longer even have to contemplate a glass of grapefruit juice with my holiday breakfast. Scales were pounded weekly, daily, hourly and if there was no loss, exercise might be taken – normally a stroll around the block or, on Fridays, to the chip shop. For my mum, a diet began on a Monday and ended on a doughnut.

My own approach to dieting is equally haphazard: I try to eat less, I try to drink less and I try to eat only at meal times. And I eat fruit. Tons of fruit, which my largely fruitless upbringing led me to believe was good for me, but which the experts now tell me is too high in sugar. What happened to “an apple a day” and all that? I’m waiting for the for the catchy couscous or bulgar wheat epigrams, but they don’t appear to be forthcoming. No “do’s” only “don’ts”. Can you imagine your mum telling you forty years ago that drinking a litre of green slime a day would be good for you? The nearest we got to a ‘Supergreen Smoothie’ was a pot of mushy peas. And yet, as kids, we were all so skinny. The only child in our class who carried above average ‘timber’ was known as ‘fatty’ for the rest of his life. He was revered by all because he learned to sweat before the rest of us. I was like a walking X-Ray: a badly assembled jumble of skin and bone. I looked like somebody had tried to get me onto a Ryan Air flight as hand luggage by turning me inside out and emptying me. My grandma, a Manchester woman who did not consider food to be of any value at all unless it “gave you a lining” had a mission in life to “put some meat” on me. Sadly she didn’t see it, but in the long term, she succeeded…

Getting On

I stand at the portal that will allow me entry into a new age of discovery. The doormen of Nirvana have found me to be on the list and have grudgingly agreed to let me in. There are many benefits to belonging to the club that I will shortly join: I can take tea and biscuits with my fellow sexagenarians in the designated café; I can board the bus to Rhyl with a half-empty suitcase and a clear conscience; Lord knows! I may eligible for a discount on a stair-lift or a sit-in bath. I have reached the age when I understand that I should always smile sweetly at the dentist, because to gnash my teeth at his suggestion that I need several long-haul holidays-worth of dental treatment is merely putting money in his already bulging pockets. I have attained the maturity that allows me to comprehend that the true joy of an April day by the east coast seaside cocooned within fourteen layers of thermal clothing to protect against the unseasonal scything on-shore breeze and draped in a slightly too small cagoule that herds the interminable arctic drizzle into the large drips that run around the rim of the hood before depositing themselves into the ever-swelling puddle on my crotch, whilst I push fish and chips around the paper as they congeal in front of my eyes, is the knowledge that there is no point in doing it, other than knowing that I don’t have to do it – but, shit, while I can, I will. I have begun to appreciate the myriad joys of getting older. A whole new world of revelation has opened up before me. I have entered, in short, a second phase of enlightenment and realisation.

I have opened my mind to learning, although, truth be told, most of what I have learned is how little I know. My discoveries, such as they are, are modest – they are not of Newtonian proportions. What I have not discovered would generate a ‘to do’ list that could keep Isaac and his apple occupied for a very long time. I have not discovered, for instance, what makes me stick to this globe of ours. I tend to adhere to the Velcro Theory. In fact, to tell the honest truth, I actually find myself irresistibly drawn towards the flat earth theory, simply because I do not understand why, wherever I go in the world, I am always the right way up. Hold up a football and put something on the bottom of it; what happens? Yup. If the world is actually a sphere, what prevents the Australians falling off? Forget gravity. Gravity is everywhere. It can’t even hold my glass on the table after six pints. And also, if the world is a globe, how come all the water doesn’t flow to the bottom? Never thought that through did you Pythagoras?

Mind you, I must admit that physics was never one of my strengths. I can still recall the look on the face of my teacher when he read my test paper aloud to the class, with special emphasis on the question ‘What is resistance’, to which I had answered ‘Futile’. I thought I was being endearingly amusing. He thought I was being an arse. Guess who was correct? I would never discover a new continent, even if one were to exist, because that would almost certainly involve sailing off into the unknown and, quite frankly, I have enough trouble sailing off into the known – and only then when I have double-checked the catering arrangements. And as for finding a new planet, I can barely see the television in these contact lenses, let alone an infinitesimal blob at the far end of the universe. No, the things that I have learned are of a much more personal nature. I do not know if they will make a difference to the lives of others. I do not know if they were at any time unknown to others. What I am beginning to know, I think, is what everybody else has known all along.

I have discovered that stairs are arranged singly for a reason; there is nothing to be gained by ascending them two at a time. I know that escalators move so that you do not have to. I have learned that there are only two types of shoe; those that fit and those that look good: no single pair of shoes is ever able to meet both criteria. I have learned that rows of buttons are always to be fastened from the bottom in order to avoid having one left over at the end. I have learned that hats are for other people.

I have begun to understand that there is no point whatsoever in attempting to take a photograph with my mobile phone. Nobody is even faintly interested in a close-up of my nasal hair, nor do the staff of The Raj Palace want another silent call from me. I have grown to realise that I have lost the innate ability I once had to know whether an acquaintance was older or younger than I. Everyone of my age looks so very old. I have begun to understand that no-one younger than me actually sees me as younger than I am. That the way I viewed people of my age when I was my daughter’s age is exactly the way that people of my daughter’s age now view me – eccentric; mildly amusing in a ‘let’s just humour him’ kind of way, but definitely to be kept at arm’s length as the risk of slight urine/saliva contamination is ever-present and increasing. I have discovered that the only thing more annoying than a younger man in an extremely expensive car is an older man in an extremely expensive car. I have begun to realise that nobody ever gained anything from arguing (except, for some, a lucrative career). Stealth is the answer. Age gives one the time to wait and the insight to appreciate that there is absolutely no finer moment than the acutely timed ‘I warned you that would happen, but you never listen do you? Oh no. You always know best…’

I have also begun to understand that advancing age is not to be feared, it is to be embraced. Embraced for its ability to allow me clearer vision than sight. Embraced for its ability to grant me the realisation that what is right for me, may not be right for anybody else, but quite frankly, that I care even less than they do. Embraced for the realisation that my appreciation of the world around me is linked, incrementally, with the paucity of time that I have left to enjoy it. Embraced because I have no choice. Embraced because it makes me happy.

Mission Statement

I feel that I should begin my first blog with an explanation of what it is exactly that I intend to do over the next however long it is that I am given: it might give you an idea of whether you are going to bother with it, and it might help to remind me what it was I had started when I return to it after pouring a glass of red and half-eating a jam and peanut butter sandwich. My intention is to observe life through the eyes of an older person – I have no choice in this, I am one – and to lay what I have seen before you in such a manner that it might take your mind off the pre-paid funeral plan for a few minutes (unless, of course, you really want that free Parker pen). I do not intend it to be about getting old, but merely the product of a mind and body that is itself slipping inexorably downhill, gathering both speed and mass, clinging on to all the dignity it can muster whilst understanding that the inevitable pratfall into the dog-shit of life lays merely inches away. I do not intend to focus solely on the experience of being an older male, but being one, it might just go that way. Just think of it as a thousand words(ish) a week window into the soul. Actually, probably less a window into my soul and more a knot-hole into my psyche. I am aware that I cannot properly see life from the perspective of someone I am not. I try, believe me, I try, but almost inevitably just as soon as I think I have got this empathy thing licked, I unwittingly put my foot in it up to my ears and, having apologised for all I am worth, write myself a note to remind me not to make that mistake again… and then lose it…

There will be, I am sure, some nostalgic twaddle; some howling at the moon; some ‘how shit things used to be’; some ‘how shit things are now’; some ‘why can’t I remember what it is I wanted to say when I started this…?’ It is my hope that people of my age may be able to wring some scintilla of truth or recognition from it, whilst those younger people amongst you may regard it as some sort of instructional tract; providing nuggets of information that you may recall at apposite times when interacting with we vintage souls (and possibly mopping up after us).

We are all getting older. Life is a one way street and we are all heading into the same cul-de-sac. The people around you can erect speed bumps and you can apply the handbrake all you like, but in the end you’ll realise that the only sensible thing you can do is to floor the clutch and enjoy the scenery. And don’t think that science is going to save you. I’m certainly not going to argue with Einstein, if he says time-travel is possible, then I’m sure it must be… but I’ve seen the films: the Captains Kirk and Picard discovered, as did Marty McFly, that even when you travel back in time, you yourself remain the same age; still getting older. Wherever you sit on the space/time continuum, you plod on, just the same. Wherever you go, you become older just getting there. So, what could be the point of going back in time if everything around you got younger whilst you continued to plough on relentlessly through your allotted span? Very little – unless, of course you’ve got an unopened pack of smoked salmon that has gone beyond its sell-by date or your egg yolk isn’t runny enough…

We all claim that we don’t feel any different to how we felt twenty, thirty, forty years ago when, in fact, we are all that little bit weaker, slower and less able; incapable of stretching without farting. Getting older is not just about what you see, what you hear and feel, but what you do and how you do it. Do you wonder how Pooh and Eeyore cope with the associated problems of sagging kapok, slackened stitching and Christopher Robin’s animalistic grandchildren; how Sherlock Holmes copes with the diminution of a giant intellect; how James Bond copes with stress incontinence? I’ll look into it.
And age is not all about loss. Age also brings us gifts: the self-knowledge that we regularly mistake for wisdom. The ability to think ‘Actually, that is not what I would do, but, let’s be honest, what does it matter.’ The knowledge that you are not going to be hanged for wearing non-matching socks and that no-one will notice if you’re wearing your pants back to front may be liberating. I, myself, have heard the siren call of primary colour trousers and Velcro shoes, and like Odysseus, I am desperately clinging to the mast of sanity, attempting to resist them. To be honest, once you’ve passed 50, nobody takes a great deal of notice what you’re wearing. Wear what you have always worn and they’ll smile sweetly and enquire whether you have actually changed that cardi at all this year. Wear something different and they’ll think you’ve had a stroke. It is better to continually keep checking that you’ve remembered to zip up your fly than to wait for someone to tell you that you haven’t. Again…

Age will gift you an insatiable thirst for knowledge. All knowledge. A desire to learn all of the things you did not learn while you were capable of learning them. Infinite curiosity will keep you alive and vital and the desire to experience will drive you crazy. If you are physically capable of doing it, then do it. You may hate it, but at least you’ve tried it and you’ll never have to do it again – like eating oysters and drinking Saké, you’ll know better next time.

The accumulation of new hobbies becomes a hobby in itself. Never tried it? Give it a go. Immerse yourself; soak it up until you’re semi-proficient; pack it up; find something new. Don’t be put off by those who might say ‘You can’t do that’. They might be right, but bugger them frankly, give it a go anyway. If it doesn’t work, you can laugh about it over a super-strength gin and tonic and spit an olive stone at the back of their neck when they’re not looking.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. Join me. If I cannot persuade you to laugh in the face of danger then at least I might encourage you to snigger in the ear’ole of adversity.