WE’RE thinking of signposting the path from the lower tennis courts to the clubhouse as ‘Orthopaedic Walk’. It’s the walk when the topic of conversation is the aches and pains of our aging bodies. Thanks to the wonders of medical science, there are new knees, new hips and new shoulders in abundance as we make…
I WAS DELIGHTED to learn today from a radio interview that the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board, a Government agency in Western Australia, has a 95% satisfaction rating in its services. Presumably that means that only 5% of its inhabitants are turning in their graves in disappointment. Seriously though, it seems death is big business. The radio…
ONCE upon a time, when I was young and carefree, I ran away from home with my toothbrush, a bottle of milk and some biscuits raided from the larder. I slipped round the corner to my friend and stayed there all day, both of us setting up home in our secret place beneath the trees…
HAVE you noticed how organised life is these days? And it starts even before we’re born. In my parents’ day, you fell pregnant, invited the midwife round to the house when the time was imminent, popped out the babe, and resumed life as normal a few days later. Dad was not involved. Well, not for…
I HAVE just told my grandson – he’s aged 5 – that he should be a publican when he grows up. Now you might think this is self-interest, that I might hope to get the odd free drink when I’m visiting. But in fact, I’m making the suggestion in his own best interest. Turns out…
MY FIRST memory of watching TV was as a 9-year-old boy in June 1953. Along with 27 million other people in Britain, the family and many of our neighbours were watching the coronation of Elizabeth II on a small black and white screen. I think Dad had bought the TV especially for the event. It…
ONE OF THE many attributes of eminent neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks was his celebration of life – even when he knew he was dying. Sacks (pictured) died last Sunday at age 82. Earlier this year he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and wrote in the New York Times of how “this does not mean that…
ALL THINGS considered, I would prefer to live longer. Of course, it helps if you are in pretty decent nick: things aren’t dropping off, the body and mind still works even though both are getting slower. New global health research published in The Lancet journal shows that we are living longer although not necessarily in…
THERE’S something wrong with my travel bucket list. The website Trip Advisor has published the top 25 landmarks for 2015, as chosen by millions of travellers, and I’ve visited only nine of them. What struck me about the list (see below) is that the UK did not rate a mention at all, whereas Italy, Spain,…
THE TROUBLE with the aging process is that you don’t really start thinking about it until you are older. And by then it may be too late to do anything about it. Nobel Laureate Elizabeth H Blackburn was in town recently to talk about her research into telomeres. These are the protective tips of chromosomes…
Booming Marvellous 