As the Years Tumble Away

The long lunch of middle-age, it should be a time of happiness, so I'm told. Centred, life begins at... not the extended angst of pushing back desert continuously, indefinitely delaying coffee, cheese and death. Worrying where it is all going to lead. Checking for grey hair. Bulging veins. Despair.

There are no advantages to ageing, no matter what the aged might tell you. Eventual, cholesterol, excess body fat, loss of bone density, falling hair, failing hearing, brain to dust.

I asked a sprightly eighty-something what her secret was. "I never stopped dancing," she said, with a sparkle in her eye. "And I never stopped eating." She smiled. There was that sparkle again. "Good food, of course."

"Of course," I said.

She took my arm. "I'd so love to dance," she said.

"I'd be delighted," I said.

She gazed up at me. "With a handsome young man."

All relative, I thought.

We glided onto the parquetry with a swirl.