“And when the boys are teenagers, I’m just going to send them to Florida for the school holidays. Let their grandparents deal with their hormonal butts”, I ribbed.

“That’s OK”, my Dad replied with disturbing solemnity, “I’ll be dead by then.”

Stunned silence. My Dad has a sense of humour so dry that it borders on Saharan, so I coughed a hesitant chuckle.

“No, seriously. I’m 63. My father died in his early 70’s, so did his brother. We [surname redacted] men don’t live very long. I’ll be gone before they’re teens.”

My Dad, always the life of the party.

That being said, it wasn’t a month earlier at a dinner party that I announced to my guests:

“Did y’all know that as of my birthday, I’ll be statistically halfway through my life? Truly middle aged?”

Stunned silence, followed by nervous laughter.

“That’s assuming that we’re talking about the American average life expectancy of 75.6 for men rather than the Australian average of 78.9. If I get the Australian bump then I’m another year away from half way.”

Apparently, a cavalier fatalism is an inherited trait.

——————

I’m not really a fan of Echo and the Bunnymen, nor any music of the 80’s. It’s all just too…synthetic. But, this is a perfect accompanying track. Their 1980 debut, “Crocodiles” is available from .