Fit as a fiddle?

It's generally assumed that to live to a fit old age, you need to stick to a healthy lifestyle. Regular gym workouts, a nutritious diet, no meat-eating, no alcohol or smoking, plenty of exercise.

Well, there are numerous people who've ignored all the medical advice, been conspicuously idle and self-indulgent, who live to a ripe old age anyway. Or of course done all the right things for decades and dropped dead at 60.

My mum didn't bother with medical advice. She never went to a gym, lived on ready meals and processed food, never took much exercise, and lived till she was 96.

Likewise my maternal grandma got little exercise, smoked and drank, never went to a gym (gyms were a rarity in those days), and lived till she was 91.

Some people say the important thing is not your lifestyle but whether you actively enjoy life and fling yourself into it. That'll keep you going when all the world-weary gym enthusiasts and teetotallers quietly fade away.

In any case, do I really want to live to 96 (or even longer)? I imagine I would be so disenchanted by then (not to mention decrepit) I would be happy to bow out.

But even if you have the healthiest lifestyle in the world, a sudden unexpected illness can come along and disable you - or even finish you off. My sister was having a good life until she developed motor neurone disease at 56 (amazingly, she's bed-ridden but still alive 17 years later). There's nothing she could have done to keep it away - what causes MND is still a mystery.

As for me, I have a fairly healthy lifestyle (minus the gym workouts) but I don't kid myself it'll keep me fighting fit. There are plenty of nasties waiting to pounce.

Dainty nibbles

We don't like to call other people greedy, do we? Firstly, it's obviously insulting. Who wants to be thought of as greedy? And secondly, it's a matter of opinion. What one person sees as greed, another sees as a natural and understandable desire for something they don't have.

I guess we'd all agree the fabulously wealthy are greedy. I mean, who needs to accumulate millions or billions of pounds? You can only spend so much on having a comfortable lifestyle, and beyond that it's just money in the bank, money the less fortunate could desperately do with.

But when it comes to ordinary folk, what makes them greedy? Are they greedy for wanting a bigger car or a bigger house or more holidays or more clothes? Or are they just after the good things in life, the things seen as part of a normal, run-of-the-mill lifestyle?

I wouldn't call myself greedy. As I see it, I have just enough of everything I need and enough to make me happy. I have a spacious house and garden, sufficient money, plenty of good food and wine, some beautiful paintings, hundreds of books, regular holidays. What more could I want?

Of course greed also encompasses those little everyday things, like asking for an extra slice of cake, or another cup of tea, or more potatoes. If everyone else has finished eating, will they think I'm greedy asking for more or will they just think I have a healthy appetite?

When it comes to alcohol though, you can drink like a fish and nobody accuses you of greed. If you stop at a glass or two, you're seen as a hair-shirted killjoy. Suddenly greed is just fine.

And greed is always more acceptable in a man. A man can happily stuff his face, while a woman should stick at dainty nibbles. Nothing too un-ladylike....

Reckless lives

When I look at the way some people live their lives, especially their unhealthy eating and drinking habits, I can come to only one conclusion - that they're either suicidal or they really don't care if they live or die.

How else can you explain the behaviour of someone who regularly drinks to excess, chain-smokes, eats junk food, or takes dangerous drugs, and has no interest in behaving more sensibly?

No doubt I sound absurdly moralistic and sanctimonious, but surely anyone who values their life and wants to enjoy it as long as possible would not deliberately do things that threaten to make that life not only much shorter but potentially blighted by serious illness?

When people say how much they love their family, their children, and their friends, how can they really mean it when at the same time they're behaving in ways that clearly jeopardise those relationships?

I can only conclude that at some level, in some private corner of themselves, they find life so frustrating and dissatisfying that actually they wouldn't mind it suddenly ending. So they simply don't have the motive to give up the destructive habits and adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Take someone like Amy Winehouse. If she genuinely valued her family and friends, why did she drink so heavily and give up on rehab so easily? Did she not care that she was causing her loved ones so much distress and concern as she relentlessly emptied one bottle after another?

I'm not being self-righteous here. I'm not saying I'm some perfect, saintly person because my own lifestyle is less reckless. I'm just lucky I'm not the addictive type and haven't succumbed to the things others find so attractive. I'm also lucky that my parents provided a model of behaviour that frowned on wild excesses of any kind. Their only blemish was my father's ten-a-day smoking habit.

I know people say how tough it is to break a long-standing addiction, even if you genuinely want to. But surely if you relish your life and want to prolong it, you're going to do whatever it takes to break the cycle?

Word check is not preventing a deluge of spam comments, so I've had to introduce comment moderation. Sorry about that. 

Nanny state

We've all done it. We've all fumed at one time or another about the nanny state and how the government keeps giving us advice we don't want or need, and how we're quite able to run our own lives, thanks very much.

We're assailed every day by official guidance on things like healthy food, giving up smoking, drinking less, drug abuse, coping with flu, obesity. We're encouraged to change our bad habits and behave more sensibly.

But do we really need all this advice or is it just patronising guff? Should they just shut up and let us decide for ourselves whether we want to be healthy or unhealthy?

My objection to all this stuff isn't so much that it's unnecessary - some people might welcome a bit of advice - but that a lot of it is misleading and confusing and not actually very helpful.

The experts keep changing their minds about what's healthy and what isn't. How much salt should I eat? How much wine should I drink? The guidelines shift every month. What about obesity? It's supposed to be deadly, but life expectancy keeps rising. How about drug abuse? It's widely condemned, but fatal overdoses are rare.

If we ignored them all and just followed our own instincts - which is what plenty of people do anyway - I doubt if we'd come to much harm. Chances are we'll still live to a ripe old age. And if we know we're overdoing something, only we can decide to stop. Official finger-wagging achieves little.

If the government really want to help people, how about more practical support for people who want to kick serious addictions and personal problems? More rehab centres. More therapists. More social workers. Oh, but I forgot. The government is pruning all those "unproductive" activities as a cost-cutting measure.

But don't worry, folks. Just make sure you eat a bit more fruit and get your flu injection and everything will be fine.

Thanks to Suburbia for the idea

A touch of class

Do any of us still seriously think of ourselves as this class or that, as middle class or working class (or even upper class)? I suppose we do, when for some reason we're forced to.

If you push me, I would describe myself as middle class, though that's more a knee-jerk response than a reality. What does it actually mean apart from fairly well-off, respectable, an office worker, a law-abiding citizen?

And if you look closely, that label's a bit bogus anyway. I have relatives who were once shop assistants or machinists, or lived in seedy neighbourhoods, or were stony broke. In short who definitely came from the wrong side of the tracks. So can I really claim middle class status?

A lot of the time we only use these labels to make ourselves feel good. If I'm a sweat-soaked manual worker, I can complain about the la-di-da middle classes who never did a proper day's work in their lives. If I'm a target-driven office manager, I can moan about the feckless working classes who live on benefits at the taxpayers' expense. At least I'm a cut above the other lot.

Supposedly everyone aspires to a middle class lifestyle. But do they really or is that just another bit of advertising bollocks? What's so wonderful about a suburban semi, a crippling mortgage, a chock-full pending tray and business plans?

My aspirations are rather different. Some interesting people to hang out with, a comfortable chair to ruminate in, some tasty food and some intelligent books are quite enough to keep me happy. The des res in a leafy cul de sac is a nice fringe benefit, but only after the rest is catered for.

Middle class or working class, does it really matter?

PS: Yes, I know, there's also the Marxist option of ruling class or working class, but that doesn't make much sense nowadays either.

PIC: Jon Hamm and January Jones in Mad Men. Taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.