I GAVE up playing pennant tennis this season on the grounds that my opponents in my over-50s division were often 20 years younger. I might have to review that decision in light of the oldies’ success in this year’s Australian Open. The standout, of course, was 35-year-old Roger Federer defeating his long-time rival Rafael Nadal…
WE ALL know that hitting a little white ball around the golf course ruins a nice walk, but now there’s scientific evidence that it’s good for you. A regular game of golf can typically burn off 500 calories over 18 holes to improve help prevent and treat chronic diseases such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes,…
ONE of the few joys of growing older is that you can remember the beginning of things half a century ago. Things like Star Trek, or The Prisoner, both of which series are celebrating 50 year anniversaries and both of which achieved cult status with the Boomer generation. In the days of the Cold War,…
THE death this week of Australian writer Richard Neville will sadden pre-Boomers and older Baby Boomers around the world. As founder of the satirical magazine Oz and later London Oz, Neville and his co-editors were the forerunners of the Baby Boomer anti-Establishment revolution which spawned Beyond The Fringe, That Was The Week That Was, the…
THE FACT that exam markers in Western Australia have highlighted illegible handwriting as a problem comes as no surprise. My own handwriting, once a source of praise from my primary school teachers so long ago, has deteriorated to such an extent that I rarely put pen to paper. When I do, I have difficulty in…
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…
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…
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 