I like helping people, if it's not too much effort. I also like showing off. By sharing my thoughts and experiences, I believe I'm doing a little of the former, and a smidge more of the latter.

Extraordinary! Colleen, you're just as I imagined you would look!

Ann of 200K points sure beats Anne of the Thousand Days - and you get to keep your head! Not that I've noticed you ever losing it, which is more than can be said for some.

So they're parrots? Would never have guessed. Birds can live a long time, and parrots more than most. So with good luck, some of those hatchlings may be going strong when every human regular on this site (I make exception for the aliens among us) is dead from natural (or in some cases unnatural) causes. Make sure you teach them to speak in gentlemanly or ladylike accents. They are our emissaries to the future!

Some names, especially when bestowed by sports and entertainment personalites, are perverse in the highest degree. Yet the parents are often people of genuine talent. 'Moon Unit', daughter of Frank Zappa. Satchel, son of Woody Allen'. As for the offspring of Beb Geldof, what had they done to him?

As I've mentioned on another thread, Peaches Geldof used to be teased at school with the question, 'Hey, Peaches, are your parents bananas?' At that, she got off lightly. The eldest is called Fifi-Trixibelle. Her current appearance may be derived in part from trying to live up to such a name.

Mainly, since my late 20s. I had my share of adolescent angst, and of course, 'fell in love woth love', which is never a good idea. Then in my early 20s I recklessly embarked on not one but three relationships, with very little breathing space between, all of which a man of more experience could have seen were going nowhere good. Of course, it's partly through them that I became a man of more experience, so one must take the good with the bad.

Incidentally, there's a Rogers & Hart song which begins 'Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe ...' Sung by Frank Sinatra and Julie Andrews among others. It's a good tune, the lyrics are clever, and I endorse the sentiment.

Philip Larkin had the answer - something to do with the Chatterly trial and the Beatles' first LP.

According to G R Elton, the Elizabethan formula was to live as if you expected to die tomorrow, but build as if you expected to live a thousand years. A surprising number succeeded, as a scan of the surviving Elizabethan stately homes, matched against the lifetimes of their founders, will attest.

But for common folk like us, the build part is not, and never has been an option. So, how to live as if you expect to die tomorrow? It's a matter of temperament, really. A man for whom I had immense regard, and who was of the monogamous disposition, rang and corresponded with me fairly intensely after his wife died. He was confidently expecting to waste away rather quickly, so as to join her - to die of a broken heart. But his body had other ideas. He was a big, strong man, and though he was 80 years old, he wasn't sinking at all fast. He was also rich, but not super-rich. His wife was dead, but he had a son, and he was good at making money. He therefore devoted the remainder of his life, nearly a decade as it turned out, to playing the stock exchange and banking his profits in sundry off-shore accounts to which his son also had access, so as to evade inheritance tax. This activity gave him pleasure, and I'm sure it lengthened his life considerably.

He made a good death as well. By that time he had a full-time live-in 'carer', who was entitled to her time off. He therefore set the panic-button, just in case, wished her well on her trip to London, took a four-course (!) lunch with a bottle of claret, settled down to watch the racing on TV, drifted off, and never drifted back. By the time she got back, he was luckily beyond resuscitation.

Go forth and do likewise!

There's a book called 'Islam for Dummies' which you can buy from Amazon. If it were called 'Islam is for Dummies', it would have a better title.

It's a truism that today you are older than you have ever been before, and younger than you will ever be again. Make the most of what you have left!