ON THE NATURE OF AGEING

Today I was re-reading an article from my 'cuttings file' by AA Gill, one of my favourite columnists; I don't think there is a topic he can't write about with extraordinary insight and skill. This was a feature article in the Sunday Times magazine on ageing, and here are a couple of excerpts:

All life ends in failure. However much you've laid aside for the package tour of an afterlife, it ends in failure: heart failure, failing eyes and limbs, the failure of bladders and balance, the failure of memory and hope. But it should also be a long moment of success - the pleasure of a race well run, the pride in a family born, nurtured and fledged, a validatory break on the bench to remember times transcended and misfortunes overcome or stoically subdued.

and this...

You know, you really should spend an hour listening to someone who's lived twice as long as you, not as social philanthropy or goodness, but for your own sake, for the sake of your self-worth, to calm your speechless fears about ageing, and because you'll hear something funny and clever, touching and probably astonishing...Experience may not bring wisdom, but it does make for some cracking stories.

Tomorrow, I'll have spent seventeen years listening to Mundy's extraordinary stories, and I never tire of hearing them.