Country Living with Francis Farragher

There’s something refreshingly cheerful about still being around as the birthday statistics slip into the higher figures, and I suppose we all take encouragement from older people who still retain their zest for life and living.

We have an example on our own doorstep of Michael D. Higgins at 84-years of age who has completed two terms as Irish president and whose mind is as agile at it was many moons ago when he delivered a stirring political science lecture in Terrapin 5 of a then humble enough looking UCG campus.

Even in our own paper of a couple of weeks back there was an article about 82-year-old Peadar Nugent from Athenry as he prepared to compete in his 44th Dublin City Marathon Run, and after that I cringe at my reluctance to go for a swim here and there, to do a 5-mile cycle or to at least have one more go at the Saturday Park Run near Oranmore.

It’s a great blessing – or maybe it’s something to work on – the art of staying positive, as the decades pass nearly as quickly as years did in our youth, but at times there has to be acceptance that things like balance, agility, speed off the mark, and memory are just not what they were . . . and then there’s the bone creak when you stand up after sitting down for an hour or two.

Then, there is the artificial and all too fleeting stimulant of feeling young again, after a third or fourth pint only to drop down to ‘zero positivity’ once the effects of the diluted ethanol have worn off . . . and I’m ‘blue in the face’ from reading article by half-famous people on how they feel so good after giving up the booze. Oops, forgot to mention that willpower, like agility, tends to disimprove too with the years!

There are many times too that I think life is like the 25-card game, on the basis that if you’re dealt a bad hand, then you’ll never get any tricks, but if you get a decent hand, then there’s an onus on you to play them to the best of your ability.

We don’t though have much by way of control when it comes to ‘the dealer’ or the player who ‘cuts the deck’ and we all know of the people too who never put a cigarette to their lips or sipped even a half-glass of wine, and who had departed ‘the game’ before 50 summers of their existence had passed.

Many of us too will have experienced the trauma of ‘a young death’ involving a family member or friend, and that always involves a long and gruelling recovery period, but if we’re lucky enough to have survived those jolting experiences . . . well, then, just maybe, the time has come to look at a few more positive aspects of life.

Pictured: Willie Nelson: Never really grew old!