Hunter Davis wrote in last weeks Sunday Times the Eighty Reasons why at 80 he never had it so good.
Friend Finola Wiltshire sent it to us and I got inspired !

Sixty Seven things I like about being Sixty Seven.

1. I don’t have to try and dress to try to look sexy anymore, skin tight trousers, stomach hugging shirts, not for me anymore, comfort is now the word.

2. I can no longer remember books, even ones I particularly loved, except that I enjoyed them once. So now I mostly graze on my own library. If I enjoyed it before I will probably love it again.

3. I can get a pension, instead of being a contributor I am now a beneficiary

4. Grandchildren, the reward of old age, constantly entertaining and guilt free.

5. My children have somehow snuck into our inner circle of friends

6. My wife- now of 43 years- a fact of which I am extremely proud and a person of whom I am extremely proud.

7. The fact that this time, for the first time in my life work has become optional, we only work because we want to.

8. Because I am fat I now am constantly on an intermittent, day on day off diet, an odd thing to like I know but Oh! The joy of Breakfasts when you have been dieting the day before and the joy of the dinner (albeit strictly calorie controlled) when you have only been eating scraps all day.

9. Writing, I have discovered that I adore writing- having spent most of my life on a hard physical job (cooking) I now have the time to write.

10. Brothers and sisters-all the old sibling rivalry has long gone and now we all just love to hang out together and remember our childhood.

11. More or less as above- but old friends. They have now become brothers and sisters, above criticism and extremely comfortable.

12. Facebook- my method of keeping contact with the above.

13. New friends; and we have made quite a few since we moved to France, stimulating and always interesting.

14. Nephews and Nieces, young, lively and mighty craic they keep me feeling young.

15. Adopted Nephews and Nieces- You Know Who You Are ditto to above.

16. There is also a special category of great nephews and great nieces and adopted same. Keep coming to see us!

17. My crosswords and my Sudokus. My excuse to disappear into a corner and recover- just like my father did.

18. I am so grateful that my career as a chef/ restaurateur has proved to be a brilliant apprenticeship, for my career as proprietor/chef of a chambre d’hote here in France

19. I am also grateful that running a busy restaurant for fifteen years in Ireland has furnished me with loyal customers who continue to support me here in France.

20. Stories, my long life has given me loads of stories. I have one for absolutely every occasion and, if my wife lets me, at the drop of a hat…….

21. I cooked all my life but always under pressure of time, now I still cook but, respecting my age and general decrepitude, people now are prepared to wait for me to finish to my satisfaction. Damn right too.

22. I have lived long enough to reach this electronic age. Don’t let any of the dinosaurs fool you- it is way easier to email a letter than to search for pen and ink and paper and stamps and then struggle to the post office to send it. Vive the emails.

23. Ditto for mobile phones, to phone France in my youth we had to get on to international calls in London and they then Paris and the crackly re-routing would begin. Now? I just dial a number. Hey Presto!

24. Ditto ditto for Skype and Facetime, the grandsons can see us and we them- such a difference.

25. I no longer have a mortgage. Enough Said.

26. I have the time to read poetry- something I never allowed myself in my youth- now it is one of my great pleasures.

27. I no longer need to sunbathe when the sun comes out to turn myself a fashionable brown. Now I enjoy the heat, and sit comfortably in the shade.

28. I am now happy to leave certain skills to one side and realise that I will never master them- like trigonometry, the washing machine and the off-side rule.

29. Shoes, deserve a special mention, fashion no longer comes into it, now it is comfort, comfort all the way.

30. Getting reductions into museums, art galleries and even sometimes cinemas as a senior is just marvellous. The sense of privilege and surprise will never leave me.

31. It is a marvellous feeling when your children are no longer dependant on you, after all these years now if you hand out it is for your pleasure.

32. Drink. Thorny one this but certainly there happens at a certain age the realization that if my drinking was going to make me alcoholic it would have done it by now.

33. Job Satisfaction changes totally when you do it for pleasure rather than reward. Even ironing shirts becomes a pleasure when you decide that you have the time to do A Really Good Job.

34. Dying loses its more terrifying aspects when it slowly sinks in that they will all manage without you- they are old enough and sensible enough.

35. From the above, at my age you can enjoy the fantasy of being present at your own funeral party.

36. Collecting stuff, visiting vide Greniers and Brocantes. Over the years I was so acquisitive I would let nothing pass. Now I look with relief at a crack or a stain and walk on by with impunity.

37. I am now old enough not to be ashamed to confess to having been totally enamoured by dance in my youth. The prospect of this old fat man turning pirouettes is just too absurd for people to take it seriously.

38. Old age has given me the confidence to approach people who impress me and congratulate them on their successes and the gravitas of old age allows them to usually respond. I recently sent Judy Collins an email to tell her to reassure Joni Mitchell on recovery from a brain haemorrhage. She replied and promised to do just that.

39. I am no longer embarrassed by having to pee three or four times in the night or indeed three or four times during a party. First thing I do in a strange house is locate the loo.

40. Talking to strangers- even here in France- has become much easier when you know that they realise that you are way past being threatening.

41. Memories are wonderful; sometimes I can just sit quietly and be flooded by memories of happy times in the past. It is magical.

42. I now can summon people, relations, family, and friends to come and see me. They usually realise that it might be easier for them than me and well might be the only way to shut me up.

43. Scrabble- I seem to be getting better at it.

44. Sleep seems much more manageable in old age, if I can’t sleep I just don’t and potter around and do something else.

45. And sleeping when you are tired, like after lunch or in the terrace in the afternoon is just simply wonderful.

46. Travel becomes a totally different thing in old age. You go somewhere because you want to, not because you feel you should. No bucket list is ever worth disturbing the pleasure of old age.

47. Certainly your critical faculties become different. You will no longer continue reading a book you don’t enjoy or watching something on the box which bores you. Life has suddenly become far too short.

48. Things come back to you in old age, my Irish language is returning little by little. All those years in primary school wrestling with the modh coinniollach are beginning to pay off.

49. Shopping can become an unexpected pleasure when a rare moment happens when you find something which you like which fits! I usually buy two.

50. Like books, films you know you have liked in the past can be revisited with renewed pleasure any time. The joy of the familiar is something that youth don’t have.

51. A bath! What a marvellous thing- not something to bother washing in, just to soak in until you wrinkle like a white prune. Particularly in the winter and wonderful in the huge bath which I presented to myself as a reward for getting old.

52. I gather music cd’s all the time so the amount and range of music I enjoy is constantly expanding. Opera is a comparatively new interest, fuelled by the live Met productions in our local cinema. And then there is French chanson- a whole new world ripe for investigation.

53. The middle of the night- this is a moment I cherish. I wake and potter, as alert as a puppy and then, after an hour or so, I can sleep for the rest of the night.

54. Being allowed to live in France, we had to be retired to do it, we failed the one time we tried to work here in our youth but as retirees all is possible.

55. To hark back to the rewards of the internet age- I just love that I can make new friends through the social media stuff. Friends who I will probably never meet but with whom I talk every day. You know who you are!

56. The permit of old age to be an occasional curmudgeon. To get annoyed about other drivers, cross and tetchy about impolite people in shops. It is such a relief not to have to hold it in.

57. I love that I no longer have to pretend to despise steak and chips, or a good breakfast fry up but nothing will persuade me to admire tomato ketchup or Hellman’s mayonnaise.

58. An unexpected benefit of our family is that having been entirely in female company in their youth , having three daughters, I love the fact that now the balance is reversed and there are now six males in the family, me the three partners and the two grandsons. I love all the ladies dearly but it is lovely to have a few men around too.

59. I love our old age duvet, made from 100% goose down it cost about twice as much as our first car but Oh ! The comfort and I know that nothing would have justified such extravagance when we were struggling to raise the family.

60. I love the way Ireland has come into the 2000’s and has gotten so many of its priorities right from Gay Marriages to plastic bags. It could so easily have gone the other way.

61. The garden, ( I can hear my wife scoff) I know she does basically all the work but I do love to look at it- and have been known to do some of the heavier lifting. It is a thing of beauty for the old age. Thank you for making it so Sile.

62. Art- now there’s a thing, I find as I age that I am loving- and hating – pictures more and more. Now I seem to have crushes on artists rather like I used to have on pop stars. (My latest is for Raoul Guiraud- a man from Beziers who died in ’76)

63. I also love that, in my old age, I seem to becoming a little bit of a writer and now do pieces for two publications and have a book which is at least in discussions with a publisher. What fun to do something new in ones 60’s!

64. One of the great pleasures of our old age is our beautiful house here in France- it is also a pleasure to us to share it with so many people
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65. Alep soap- made in Syria- which in recent years because it is made with olive oil and bay leaves- has meant that for the first time in my life I am itch free.

66. I am so pleased that in my old age I have now forgiven my ancestors for being amazingly successful in business in Cork. For years I was such a left wing snob that I wanted to deny their achievement. Now all is forgiven and I am suitably proud.

67. My last reason to be glad of being 67 is that my life has been able to provide me with the leisure and the time to take
several hours out of a day to do this act of trivia.
Thank you Hunter Davis for the idea.