A blissful naivety shattered

Cast your mind back a few thousand moons to when you were a kid - some family event (celebrating a sibling getting their 100-metre swimming badge, the arrival of a puppy, the laying of a new patio etc) was coming to an end, and it was time to kiss Great Aunty Ethel goodbye. This was about as enthralling as jaundice - but compelled by politeness (and pity), that peck on the aged cheek would always be delivered, albeit with stuttering hesitancy and an unwavering but just-about-conquerable reluctance.

When you're that young, old age and its inescapable physical reminders seem as far away as a £150 two-week package deal to Proxima Centauri. This blissful naivety continues for approximately 15 years until, as I discovered last weekend, it ends as suddenly and unexpectedly as the movement of a bowel tasked with removing days-old seafood.

Ghost in the hallway: MJ is back

It occurred to me earlier today that too many of my blogs have taken a cheery little look at getting old and the inevitability of death. Well, here we go again - for the last time, promise. I'll also be using the subject of Michael Jackson [how many times - not the ex-Cheltenham town player, the King of Pop] once more.

In a quite remarkable development, MJ's ghost has decided to appear in one of Neverland's hallways - just as a CNN TV crew is exploring the building.

Tick-tock

This chap is literally watching the passage of time. Us humans are obsessed with clocks, watches and other more contemporary time-keeping devices which, alas, this fellow will never see.

Time reminds us of our own mortality. That each one of us is... tick-tock... getting older by the second. Many have dreamed of living forever, or least extending their lives by a few years.

Am I cracking up...

...or just getting older? Or so Noel Gallagher once pondered. He may well have been cracking up at the time, but Oasis are still 'cracking out' some 'great tunes'. So, by process of elimination, I conclude that, like the rest of us, he is merely getting older.

Interesting fact alert: did you know that more than half of retirees in this country have retired parents?