First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can.
I did enough Spanish at school to get around
Madrid even today, but have become aware on visits to
Barcelona (and
Bilbao) that the local languages have begun to take some precedence over Castilian.
Answer:
a. Customer's name
B. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!
For those of us who are retired, there is no excuse for not being ready for Xmas, seeing as how we have had all that time at our disposal. Furthermore, we baby boomers, who have worked in the professional, public and business sectors, and who are used to project managing the BBC’s Xmas schedule, organising the delivery of 5000 xmas dinners to the elderly, getting a xmas special exhibition ready on time, on budget and in the right place, delivering prawns across the world for xmas starters, on schedule and without mishap through the Bosphorous, should have all it takes to achieve a perfect ‘just-in-time’ Xmas of a quality to astonish and delight all our chums. If only it were that easy!
Martin Bell wrote his first book at 57, became an MP at 58 and an ambassador for UNICEF at 62. Not that he didn’t have a more than respectable career before all this, but it just goes to show that life isn’t over till it’s over. In 2000, just before standing for Parliament for the second time (he was narrowly defeated), he was interviewed by the formidable Lynn Barber who noted that he had aged, looked gaunt and hollow eyed and had an alarming tremor in his hands. So it was a relief to see that the 69 year old who opened his front door to me one murky afternoon in November was pink cheeked and pleasantly plump with perfectly steady hands. “They’re all right I think,” he says when I ask him, holding them out for inspection, “Perhaps I was nervous when I met her.”
I was reminded yesterday of the issue of how one deals with those feelings of unfairness when you are seen to be responsible for events over which you may not have had direct control. Chairman Paul Gray accepted responsibility for failings at HMRC and resigned. Steve McLaren finally did to once the money had been sorted out.
Regardless of whether we think each man is in the right or not, it does reflect the many different ways we react to issues of responsibility, blame, guilt in real life.
At the age of 55, Christopher Ondaatje was riding high on the hog: a hawk-eyed king of the corporate jungle, multi millionaire and financial titan, patron and pillar of the establishment which had shunned him as a young man. Clever, cultured, politically influential – an arriviste with the world at his feet. The perfect time, then, for a spot of reinvention. He sold his extensive business interests, moved his wife and family to England and went bush in Africa, retracing the steps of his hero, the explorer Richard Burton, tracking leopard across the Serengeti plains and embarking on a career as a writer. Twenty years later he is the author of nine books, possessor of a knighthood and a gilt edged reputation for philanthropy with a whole wing of London’s National Portrait Gallery named after him.
In the 19th century, Korea, then undivided, was called ‘The Hermit Kingdom’ because of its impenetrability to foreigners. Since then, it has had a chequered history. From 1910 until 1945 it was under the rule of the Japanese. A few years after their defeat, communist Korean fighters. aided by China, moved down the peninsula from the north, and hostilities followed, the south being supported by America. Since the conclusion of the Korean War of 1950-1953 the country has been divided along the 38th Parallel into two nations, North and South, with very different political characteristics, even though the Koreans have always been culturally one people.
Baby boomers don’t retire – not in the slippers, golf and potting- shed sense anyway – we just redirect our energies into things that aren’t necessarily about earning money or nursing a career. Spurred on by a sense of precious time, we embrace adventure and learning, nurture new friendships and often find ourselves gripped by a late-onset urge to make a difference.
Not that he didn’t have a more than respectable career before all this, but it just goes to show that life isn’t over till it’s over. In 2000, just before standing for Parliament for the second time (he was narrowly defeated), he was interviewed by the formidable Lynn Barber who noted that he had aged, looked gaunt and hollow eyed and had an alarming tremor in his hands. So it was a relief to see that the 69 year old who opened his front door to me one murky afternoon in November was pink cheeked and pleasantly plump with perfectly steady hands. “They’re all right I think,” he says when I ask him, holding them out for inspection, “Perhaps I was nervous when I met her.”