Indomitable

"All those years climbing up and down mountains and now I'm finding it increasingly hard to breathe just going down a few piffling stairs. And I resent that!"

She's may be counting down her days. But my favourite octogenarian is not going to give up without a fight.

I don't suppose she's spent many minutes idle since birth and she isn't planning on starting now. So she's painting bookcases, attending concerts, cooking meals, renovating window-frames, planning treats for her friends - and last week took a daytrip up to Glasgow to receive a Distinguished Service Award. Not bad for someone who is supposedly terminal.

Tennyson's Ulysses says:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence

I'm telling you, Ulysses could take her correspondence course.

I am in awe of her. (And I have a side-bet on her too)