High life | 17 August 2017

As Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a different context, a happy birthday at my age is a terminological inexactitude. I needed the birthday I had last week like a hole in the head, to coin a brand new expression. Mind you, the miasma of misinformation that deals with maturity never fails to depress. The ancient Greeks did respect old age, but they got old in their late twenties. An 80-year-old in old Athens would be a 250-year-old in today’s world. There is nothing better than youth, and it’s certainly not wasted on the young, Lord Henry. Everything works, injuries disappear after a night’s sleep, a broken heart mends at the sight of someone new, one’s too busy to notice the stupidity of others, too intolerant of weakness to acknowledge one’s own. Talk about looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Most important of all is that youth lacks a timetable. Tomorrow really never comes.