How To Live To Be A Hundred (Once You Leave The Doctor’s Surgery)

[by Róisín Curé] My husband Marcel is always trying to think of ways to live to be a hundred. I think it’s because three of his five siblings have had cancer in the last few years. On the other hand, his aunt and grandfather lived to be well into their nineties. Perhaps that had something to do with their not being able to bear to leave the tropical shores of Mauritius. So, in the longevity stakes, it could go either way. Meanwhile, Marcel is always coming up with schemes to prolong our lives. Fasting, exercise, omega 3 supplements, the gym, doing crazy stuff on a fast dinghy in the ocean. I join in to a lesser or greater degree: right now I’m following a “Vegan Before Six” plan – literally, a vegan diet until 6pm – after which you can tuck into a roast hog if you so wish (although I never seem to want to). I do it because it makes me feel good rather than anything else, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try some of the other things we hear about in the media.

Which is how I ended up in the doctor’s surgery yesterday.

One evening just over a month ago, Marcel and I and one or two of the kids were watching a programme about living longer. There’s a test you can do, it said, which is a reliable indicator of whether you will live to be a thousand or whatever. Sit on the ground, cross-legged, then get up, without using your hands to push yourself up. Marcel and I (and the only one of our children who wasn’t too lazy to try) tried and failed.

“I’m going to practice this until I get it,” said Marcel. The next day I gave it another go my bedroom, where my failure would go unremarked. Off I went…success! I was going to live to be thirty thousand after all! The thing is, I used the topside of my foot to push myself up…and I think I broke it. All (ahem) seven stone bearing down on my poor little metatarsal was too much for it and by the end of the day it was very sore. It’s got much worse over the last month so it was off to the doctor yesterday, who reckoned I had a stress fracture, and sent me off for an x-ray.

The doctors I go to are very busy – you just arrive and wait your turn – and I had to wait two hours. This sketch took nearly an hour. I would have painted it long before I got to the notices on the board but I had forgotten my jar of water. So instead I just drew on and on until I had drawn everything I could see, but I still had another hour before me…

Don’t try it at home, folks.