I'm sorry if this sounds impertinent, but when are you going to die? The reason I put the question is that I've asked it many times in the past, and only one person has given me a straight answer. He's a friend of about my age - early fifties - and he reckons he'll shuffle off this mortal coil in two thousand and twenty-five. Thank you, John. We'll wait and see if you're right.
The death of parents gives a very good guide to one's life expectancy. I'm fifty-three. My father died aged seventy-one. My mother is still very vigorously alive at eighty-nine. Well, men die earlier than women, but then my father was a smoker and I'm not, so if I give myself another five years more than him, that's seventy-six- no let's be generous - say seventy eight...
Sounds pretty good. Gives me another twenty-five years of hopefully not worrying about the things that don't matter, of not agonising about things unachieved, but rather glorying in the things I've still got. Like being alive.
Still it does remain an intriguing question. When are you going to die? Try asking it to a few people. I promise you'll get very few straight answers.
