Hello. Happy New Year. I make no allowances for people who don't hold this to be the New Year period because I do and I am expressing the wish that you are happy now. Stop moaning.

There was an advert on TV in the UK a few years ago. People wandering the street in an everyday manner all had numbers floating over their heads. They couldn't see the numbers, nobody else could see the numbers. But we could. Mysterious, invisible numbers. It was like the time when I was at University and somebody plastered the campus with ads. He is coming. He will be here soon. He is on his way. Turned out to be an ad for Jesus. No offence, Christians, but even at 19 I was too old to be surprised by people who believe in Jesus. If Jesus really had shown up I would have been surprised, especially as I went to University in South Wales, but it was just a bible study group or something. The numbers were equally disappointing. It turns out they were cholesterol numbers.

Anyway, the advert exhorted us all to 'know your number, lower your number'. It did sort of talk about why cholesterol can kill you (what can't?) but I quite clearly remember having no idea how you were supposed to find out what your bloody number was. I looked above my head, it wasn't there. So am I supposed to go to a doctor for this stuff? Come on, I know you go to a doctor if you're ill, or think you might be ill, but just to check on the off chance? If a Government ad for cholesterol can't be bothered to tell you how to find out what your cholesterol level is, I find it hard to take the whole thing that seriously

So that, three paragraphs in (I know, I had to write the guideml) is my text for today. Keeping an eye on your health is a fine thing. Spending your life worrying constantly about every aspect of your body that could possibly be better is dangerously anal, and will only make you worry about your anus. So okay, eat fruit and veg, go easy on the alcohol (I write this, mind you, on new year's eve, so I'm on my third bottle, although I am sharing some of it) try to get some exercise, but worrying because an aspect of you that you know nothing about might not be exactly right is probably going to do you more harm through stress than not ever knowing it was there at all.

I've gone on a lot about caring in this space (it's sort of the point) but not caring also has its place. You could reach 100 in a state of excellent physical health only to discover that not only are your friends all dead, but so are some of their children. And to make it worse your body is fine but your mind, which medical science hasn't got a rating system for yet, is going. My maternal grandfather is 90 this year. He is my one surviving grandparent. I look to him as a sort of health role model, because he has always taken good care of himself and has reaped the benefits of being in good condition in his later years. But the fact is that the body crumbles eventually. His knees are not his own, or his hips. He's feeling the effects of his age. He won't live forever and, while the thought fills me with dread, I'm glad he won't. Alone and virtually immobile at 120 is no fun. Get to a decent age and die happy knowing you lived a little.

I am sorry If that whole getting old and dying motif from the last paragraph dragged the mood down a little. I didn't mean this to be a glum piece, really. I want to start the year on a happy note, so my message should be a positive one. Look after your body, you only get one, but don't keep it wrapped in cotton wool against the mythical future in which you will have the body of a 20-year-old with the wealth you have spent 50 working years fastidiously saving for. Make yourself happy. Make the people around you happy. Health is good, happy is better.

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