Forget bucket lists – focus on things to avoid before you die
Getting older is a strenuous business these days. When I was growing up my dear grandparents led a life of sedate and contented routine. My grandmother grew gentians; my grandfather followed the vacillating fortunes of Gillingham FC. Once a year they took a cruise to Madeira. As far as I know, they had never heard of a bucket list.
But for the current generation of third agers, the appearance of the first grey hair is the signal for a bucket list of formidable ambition and expense. The remoter parts of the planet are heaving with intrepid oldies swimming with dolphins, admiring the Northern Lights and swarming up Machu Picchu as they cross off yet another experience.
A backlash against all this preposterous hyperactivity is long overdue, and Mr Weeks of Felixstowe has begun it in fine style, with a letter to The Telegraph proposing an “inverted bucket list” of things he never wants to do again, including eating pumpkin and going on a cruise. My own inverted-bucket list includes guided tours, any sport that I can’t do fully clothed and sitting down, and submitting to hugs from people I’ve only just met.
But I’m inclined to deepen the resistance further and banish the bucket altogether, with an un-bucket list of things I’ve never done and have every intention of resisting to the end: eating a burger, wearing trainers, owning a Kindle. In the time saved by eschewing these things, it strikes me that I could grow some pretty fine gentians.
Winter has arrived, prompting the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to warn that over-the-counter cold remedies don’t work. Health professionals, NICE advises, should tell their snuffly patients not to bother with decongestants, warning instead that “they’ll probably be feeling this way for a while”. Thank you, Doctor Finlay. On the bright side, the advice to “take it easy” is an unexpected official endorsement of my habit of treating minor illness as an unscheduled holiday. Having laid in a store of lemons, honey and whisky, I take to my bed with a hot-water bottle, a quantity of comforting fiction and any small animal that cares to keep me company. A few days later, the cold is gone and I emerge glowing with whisky, restored health and the virtuous satisfaction of not having become that universally dreaded figure, the Lemsip Martyr, with her righteous sniff, her useless panaceas and her inescapable miasma of infection.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbles Jo March in Little Women, a complaint that earns her a gentle rebuke from her saintly sister, Beth, who points out that “We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other.” Fast-forward 150 years and Christmas won’t be Christmas without a 2ft chocolate Father Christmas from John Lewis or a £10,000 hamper from Selfridges, containing enough cinder toffee to give you tummy-ache until Candlemas. The recent vogue for tasteful celebration is over, apparently. Now it’s all about gargantuan excess. Enticing though that sounds, I’m not sure that even a chocolate Father Christmas weighing more than Baby Jesus can quite match the special charm of paper chains, wobbly homemade mince pies, and the simple joy of an epic family row over the annual game of Scrabble. read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion