NOTHING TO SHOUT ABOUT
A RESEARCH scientist in Australia is testing a drug that reverses the signs of ageing.
Professor David Sinclair, of South Wales University, has so far been using it on mice.
“The cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice after just one week of treatment.
“This is the closest we are to a safe and effective antiageing drug that’s perhaps only three to five years away from being on the market, if trials go well.”
Bring it on and try it on me, Prof. I’m all for cell-renewal and a trip back to youthful health and exuberance. It used to be said that life begins at 40, until modern improvements in Western medicine changed it to life begins at 50.
Today’s elderly people often have a much younger attitude than their predecessors.
Instead of growing up during a war, they were rock and roll teenagers and grew up with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
By heck, give them cell-renewal and a few hip replacements and you can forget old age and retirement homes and re-open Huddersfield’s iconic clubs Johnny’s and The Catacombs to cater for the regeneration generation.
Before long, life could begin at 80. THOUGHT I’d hit the jackpot when I found a new £1 coin dated 2016 in my change. I’d read these had been released by mistake and were worth a lot of money.
“Don’t be daft,” my wife Maria said when I told her. “That sort of thing never happens to us.”
I checked online and, sure enough, that sort of thing doesn’t happen to us. They are not worth a lot of money.
The Royal Mint now apparently says lots were minted in advance for the launch and they are not rare at all.
Ever the optimist, I’m still checking for Jane Austen fivers. It was reported four were released with a small portrait of the author hidden away on the note that could be worth up to £50,000.
The other day I got lax and handed over a fiver in a local store without having checked it first and panicked as the assistant immediately held it up to the light. What could I have done, if it was? Try to grab it back?
“Sorry. You haven’t actually put it in the till yet, so technically this transaction remains incomplete and it’s my fiver.”
It didn’t matter, of course, because it wasn’t a Jane Austen fiver. That sort of thing never happens to us.