Reasons to be cheerful (From The Northern Echo)

Reasons to be cheerful

2:40pm Friday 19th August 2011 in Sharon's View By Sharon Griffiths

OH come on, let’s look on the bright side – if only to consider Mick Jagger’s beauty routine, one of the best laughs of the week. Because I don’t think I can take much more hand-wringing over the riots. Everyone has their horror story. Everyone has their theory.

Everyone has their solution. And yes we all have a responsibility and our part to play in making things better.

But.. most people didn’t riot. Most people are still decent. And since the riots, more people are consciously making an effort to be neighbourly.

So, without diminishing one jot the tragedies, there are still reasons to be cheerful.

But we do have a talent for looking on the black side, don’t we?

Only the truly glum could take some of the decade’s best news – that we’re all living longer – and turn it into a disaster. Why is it a disaster?

It’s wonderful.

It’s brilliant that we’re not all dropping off the perch worn out and toothless by the time we’re 40. And if we have to carry on working until we’re 70, well, we’ll still probably have worked a lot fewer hours with a lot less effort than our grandparents did. So let’s rejoice and just get on with it – even if it takes new knees, new hips, new hearts and a bucketful of pills.

Aren’t we lucky to have the chance? Surely it’s something to celebrate, not to moan about. And I speak as someone whose private pension is now worth less than a heap of grass cuttings.

The 83-year-old American woman getting breast implants to increase her allure might be as daft as a brush, but you have to admire her optimism and her refusal to give in.

Then there’s Mick Jagger, 68, and still strutting his stuff in a bright pink suit – apparently he covers about 12 energetic miles in each stage performance. No wonder he’s regularly tucked up in bed by 11 o’- clock every night, with his face covered in lotions and potions, especially heavy duty eye cream. It shouldn’t happen to a sex god. Who can take life seriously with that image in mind?

Other cheering news is that houses are getting cheaper – good news for most of us, surely. Cars are more reliable and economical. More people start the day with a shower – for the general relief of us all – and Lycra has given the world comfortable underwear. Bliss.

Cheap flights might just be like airborne cattle class, but they’ve still given us peasants a chance to travel in a way that only the rich once did.

Our children especially zip around the world with casual ease – and manage to keep in instant touch to ease our worried minds. Magic. And my new phone comes straight from the realms of science fiction.

Who would ever have thought I would be asking questions such as “What does it mean when my apps jiggle?”.

Yesterday’s A-level results were, of course, better than ever. And even if all those students don’t get into university, there are far more going than ever did a generation ago. The overwhelming majority of them are decent people with purposeful lives.

And my son’s girlfriend has just brought me a bucket of plums from her nan’s garden. What more could we want?

Our society is not perfect and we each have a duty to make it better.

But, just for a change, let’s look on the bright side, shall we?

MEANWHILE, Shirley Valentine is having a high old time. Over-50s on foreign holidays are throwing caution to the wind and leaping into the arms and beds of seductive foreigners.

This would probably be quite cheering news if it weren’t for the dodgy diseases they end up catching.

Once upon a time, it was parents who sternly reminded their children to take precautions. Maybe it’s time those teenagers took the parents to one side and had a serious word.

TOO much television shortens your life, says new Australian research. For every hour you watch, you die 22 minutes earlier.

Well of course people who watch too much TV aren’t getting enough exercise. But is sitting watching a screen so much worse than sitting reading a book?

And if you’re watching David Attenborough instead of Celebrity Big Brother, surely that doesn’t count.

The oui-oui debacle

FRENCH actor Gerard Depardieu couldn’t wait for the plane to take off so he could use the loo. Instead the dirty dog just unzipped and relieved himself in a bottle in the cabin.

Passengers were appalled and even angrier when the flight was delayed for two hours while spillage was cleaned off the carpet. Not surprisingly, Depardieu was thrown off the flight.

But wouldn’t it have been better if the crew had given him a bucket of hot water and told him to clean it up himself? Without Marigolds?

It would almost have been worth being delayed to watch that.

Brangelina's away day

BRAD Pitt and Angelina Jolie went by train from London to Glasgow, where crowds were kept away and a fleet of cars was allowed onto the platform to meet them.

Yeah right. Just like normal people.

The last time a friend of mine parked right next to a Scottish railway platform, his car was surrounded by police and he was hauled away to be questioned for terrorism.

There again, he didn’t have Angelina Jolie with him.

One of the good guys

PRINCE Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall eventually turned up in the riot-hit parts of London and talked to people he’d set up in business through his charity, The Prince’s Trust. The trust has also chipped in an extra £2.5m to help deal with some of the causes of the rioting.

True, the prince too often appears to be on a totally different planet from the rest of us, but that was good practical help. He does a lot that’s decent and worthwhile.

Such a shame it’s always easier to remember those that are utterly daft.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
I WAS greatly interested in your piece about large numbers. This is a matter which has irritated me much from time to time over many years.

The traditional English system had the million, with six zeros; the billion, a million million, with 12 zeros, the trillion, a million million, million with 18 zeros; the quadrillion, a million million million million with 24 zeros, and so on. In addition, we had the milliard, a thousand million. This was simple, straight forward, and could be understood by anyone, although I suppose nowadays not many people would know what a milliard was.

Then the Americans had to come and mess it all up with endless confusion. Why? The milliard was abolished, and it was renamed the billion. Then the billion was renamed the trillion. In the American system, which we are now forced to use, each step up is multiplied by a thousand, instead of a million.

When I read a book involving large numbers, I go frantic trying to work out from the context which system is being used.

Matthew Winter (by email)