I’m firmly of the view that “birthdays are good for you – the people who have the most, live the longest”.

However, as I’ve been told a number of times recently there is a downside to too many birthdays.

In the immortal words of the Rolling Stones; “What a drag it is getting old.”

No, I’m not old.

Thinking of yourself as old is the first step on the road to death.

My father was amazingly active when he was 79, swimming every morning, driving the bus for the old folks’ home and more.

When he turned 80 he asked me “what’s it like to have an old man as your father?”

After that he declined rapidly until his passing at 90.

So, this is a commentary on GETTING old, not BEING old.

Danita and I have been blessed with good health and keep telling ourselves that we are not going to get into the situation where our main topic of conversation is health issues.

Unfortunately, there is the saying; “If you want to make God laugh, make plans.”

My business partner, Andy, has commented that he would like to have one week where there wasn’t some form of medical appointment, whether it’s collecting a prescription, visiting the doctor or similar.

For myself, this week has been a full-on medical experience.

I had an appointment with a rheumatologist and the second in my series of eye injections.

Like many people of my age I’m now starting a collection is “ists”.

As mentioned, I went to the rheumatologist.

The eye treatment was with the opthamologist.

I even have a client who is a gynaecologist (I don’t require her services on a professional basis but she does get included in my collection of “ists”).

According to the rheumatologist, I have osteoarthritis, in his words “the most common affliction of humankind after death and taxes”.

And I liked to think of myself as special – guess that just puts me in with the rest of the humans – bugger!

According to the gastroenterologist (there’s another “ist” I’d overlooked) he’d done 40,000 colonoscopies and mine was the second one where it resulted in internal bleeding and, in my case, almost death.

So, being 1 in 20,000 does give one a sense of being in a highly select group.

While giving me a sense of being special, it did make me feel a bit nervous when the opthamologist said the odds of complications with the eye injections were one in a thousand – not great odds when you know you’re one in 20,000.

As a consequence of informing me there is nothing that can be done to cure osteoarthritis the rheumatologist pointed out that there was no point in him seeing me ever again – nothing personal – unless it involved single malt whisky.

He did also give me some very important information: the two most important numbers as indicators of longevity are the ages at which your parents died (provided they were natural deaths).

As my father died at 90 and my mother is still very active at 90 my stats are looking pretty good (I guess that means Danita is stuck with me for quite a while).

There is another side to aging.

A close friend of my mother’s recently had his 104th birthday and is now working on planning his 105th.

He’s an amazingly active man who gave up his driver’s licence recently because, in his words, “my eyes are too old”.

He had two children, one of whom died recently, and both his children had been living in nursing homes for some years.

He commented to me that being his age and active was great but he had lost everyone to whom he had been close in his life.

There you have it: birthdays are good for you but there are subtle and seditious side-effects to them – guess it’s a bit of “too much of a good thing”.

So, keep having them but remember to look after yourself – you may need your body for a lot longer than you think.

Apart fro medical visits Danita and I had a very interesting and fun week.

There was the first FireLight event where the history of Tasmania was beamed onto the side of Mt Roland.

That was fun – watching the light show in the middle of a paddock in a very Tasmanian version of a drive-in theatre.

There was Agfest – the Tasmanian version of the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

We attended on the first day and were fascinated with things like the bullock team demonstration.

Today was a motorbike ride for me with a local friend, and then Danita and I had coffee with he and his wife.

We followed that with the play Amadeus, put on by the National Theatre in London.

They record live plays and screen them in cinemas across the world.

In addition to the play, they usually have an interview with key members of the cast.

We love those.

So, all in all, it’s been a great week and we’re looking forward to lots more.