Rules and regimes

The media is stuffed with articles about how to be healthier, how to stay physically fit, and how to live longer. But do I necessarily want to live longer? And do I want to enslave myself to all the arduous restrictions and regimes that might add a few months to my life?

Do I really want to spend hours at the gym, stop eating chocolate and ice cream, stop drinking alcohol, chomp the latest super-food, or do everything standing instead of sitting? No, I don't. That would take a lot of the pleasure out of life. It would turn me into a self-denying killjoy constantly asking myself if I should do this or do that rather than just doing what I enjoy.

My mother lived until she was 96, but by that age she was declining mentally and physically and was a shadow of her former bubbly, energetic self. Do I want to be alive at 96 in the same frail condition? I can't say I do. I'd rather conk out at an earlier age when I still have all my faculties and I'm still enjoying life to the full.

There's also the small matter of looking after all these frail elderly folk who have survived many more years than they used to a few decades ago. They're a burden on families and a burden on the NHS who may or may not give them the care and attention they need. And quite often the people looking after elderly relatives are elderly themselves, with their own infirmities to deal with.

So spare me all the well-meaning articles about octogenarian yoga maestros, nonagenarian marathon runners and globetrotting centenarians. Just give me another bowl of ice cream and some chocolate truffles. And a generous glass of pinot grigio.

Noisy eaters

For some people, social occasions can be completely ruined by noisy eaters. The sound of their companions munching, crunching, slurping and sucking drives them round the bend. They just want to flee somewhere where food is not being eaten and the dreadful background noise ceases.

There's a big difference between Jenny and me here. I've never been bothered by eating noises but some sounds make Jenny cringe with discomfort. She's been known to leave the room when I'm eating something particularly cacophonous.

It seems this horror of eating noises is surprisingly common. Many people have their pet aversions to the consumption of cornflakes or toast or crisps or apples. Or drinks being slurped or sucked through straws.

Whole households can have their private rules about what can or cannot be eaten, and in what way, in order to soothe the delicate sensibilities of one family member or another.

It's a particularly knotty problem in public places like offices or trains, when objecting to someone else's noisy eating might bring a very angry response and the charge of being a tight-arsed killjoy out to spoil other people's pleasure.

In any case, it may not be possible to mute the noise. If it's determined by the way you eat, the size of your jaw, or the shape of your teeth, there may be nothing you can do about it.

No, eating noises don't perturb me in the slightest. Food is meant to be eaten and enjoyed, every which way. What annoys me far more is the quantity of food-related debris dumped thoughtlessly on pavements - crisp packets, takeaway cartons, coffee cups, sandwich wrappers. Why can't the eaters just keep their rubbish to themselves?

Pic courtesy of Guardian/Getty Images

Enough is enough

In one of the papers today, four teetotallers explain how awkward it can be when they're surrounded by drinkers all happily chucking booze down their throats.

Inevitably when they refuse any alcohol, those who enjoy it keep asking why they abstain. Wouldn't they have more fun if they had a glass or two? Is it a religious principle? Are they recovering alcoholics?

The idea that they simply don't like the taste of alcohol, or they don't like hangovers, or they enjoy themselves fine when they're sober, seems to mystify people. How can you not want to ingest as much of the stuff as possible?

I'm subject to this sort of questioning sometimes, as I drink very little and find two glasses are more than enough to blur my brain and senses in a way I find embarrassing and annoying. My tolerance for alcohol is very limited, and it does nothing at all for my sociability or my intelligence.

But there's still the general assumption that I should be drinking more, that I can't really enjoy myself without at least a bottle of wine inside me. There's even an attitude that if I don't wake up the next morning with a colossal hangover, my evening out must obviously have been a washout.

Well, sorry, but I like my alcohol in moderation, too much of it does nothing for me whatever. If others genuinely relish non-stop quantities of it, good luck to them, though when I see people lurching out of pubs, vomiting profusely and having to be taken home by others for their own safety, I do have my doubts.

Can this really be pleasure? And am I really just a miserable killjoy?
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The Belgian city of Ghent now has a weekly vegetarian day, to counter the impact of livestock on the environment. Nice one!