Why Can't People Be Both Flexible And

Nothing Fails Like Failure

Our Desire To Conform Is Greater Than Our Respect For Objective Facts.

Auntie Phyl's Last Months In The Care Home Were Extra Pieces. Age Is Unnecessary. Some Of Us, Like My Mother, Are Fortunate Enough To Die Swiftly And Suddenly, In Full Possession Of Our Faculties And Our Fate, But More And More Of Us Will Be Condemned To Linger, At The Mercy Of Anxious Or Indifferent Relatives, Careless Strangers, Unwanted Medical Interventions, Increasing Debility, Incontinence, Memory Loss. We Live Too Long, But, Like The Sibyl Hanging In Her Basket In The Cave At Cumae, We Find It Hard To Die.

How Extraordinary People Are, That They Get Themselves Into Such Situations Where They Go On Doing What They Dislike Doing, And Have No Need Or Obligation To Do, Simply Because It Seems To Be Expected.

Nothing Succeeds, They Say, Like Success. And Certainly Nothing Fails Like Failure.