Bad habits

The journalist Virginia Ironside doesn't see why old age should mean kicking bad habits and taking up healthier ones. If you're going to die soon anyway, what does it matter if a bad habit might take a year or two off your life?

At the age of 75, she still smokes and drinks, she loves butter and cream, she takes strong painkillers against the doctor's advice, and in general she scoffs at health warnings.

I both agree and disagree. I agree that slavishly adopting healthier habits in order to live slightly longer is a bit pointless. Especially if the habits in question really go against the grain. But I also disagree because if your bad habits make you ill, then someone else has to step in and make you healthy again - if they can. Why should other people be burdened with that?

Not that it's a big issue in my case, because I've never had any bad habits to speak of. Perhaps I should be adopting a few rather than avoiding them. Would life be more fun, I wonder?

The fact is I've never smoked, I seldom drink more than one glass of wine, I've only taken "fun drugs" like marijuana and LSD on four occasions, I don't eat anything with too much salt, sugar or fat, I eat very little chocolate, and I don't spend all day on the sofa. I don't find any of this abstinence tiresome or alien, it all comes quite naturally and has done for decades.

But as Kingsley Amis once said "No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home." So if you're prone to dangerous habits, why not carry on with them and to hell with the consequences?

Well, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. So I'm unlikely to be stuffing myself with booze, drugs or double cream any time soon.

Opting out

It's still quite a brave step for a woman to deliberately abstain from sex. It's still a far from acceptable attitude. Men (and women) who think you should always be sexually available can get shockingly critical and abusive.

Frenchwoman Sophie Fontanel has written a semi-autobiographical book about her experiences as a sexual abstainer, something that is still very much a taboo subject. It has struck quite a chord with readers who feel under pressure to have sex.

She says the first ten years of her adult life were full of disappointing sex - mechanical and often pleasure-less. So she took the radical step of refusing sex entirely for the next twelve years. And apparently hardly missed it.

The real shock though was how nasty other people were about it. They showered her with insults. She was called frigid, abnormal, bitter, neurotic, a lesbian, a reactionary Catholic. Even the most seemingly sophisticated people joined in the cat-calling.

But when she wrote about her experiences, many readers expressed gratitude for her raising the issue, as they also felt badgered to have sex they didn't want.

She insists there's nothing wrong with abstaining. "Some of the most interesting characters exist above sex. It's not an infirmity. No sex is infinitely preferable to bad sex."

Well, good for her. Why should it be praiseworthy to be always jumping into someone's bed but disgraceful to be saying, "I've had enough of crap sex, I'm opting out altogether, so don't even think about it"?

In fact there are large numbers of asexuals who have no interest in sex at all, but they tend to keep quiet about it because of people's derision and incomprehension. Odd as it may seem, their attitude is just as natural as the more fashionable quest for sexual pleasure.

Pic: Sophie Fontanel