A salute to George Stewart, Scotland’s oldest skier

We are all, apparently, in spite of the stresses of Brexit and the proliferation of Krispy Kreme outlets, living longer than ever before. According to the Office for National Statistics, by the year 2066, 50 per cent of newborn girls and 44.2 per cent of newborn boys should make it to 100. A few months ago, as if to prove the point, a book landed on my desk entitled The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. The premise was that these days, thanks to healthier diets and better medical care and a general lack of natural predators, we should all now be planning to live to 100, as, for the first time in history, there’s a decent chance we might actually get there. Of course, for many people (read: anyone without several million quid in the bank) such planning will mostly be of a financial nature, and that seemed to be the main thrust of the book. “Does the thought of working for 60 or 70 years fill you with dread?” ran the blurb. Why yes, I thought, eyeing my “to do” list for the day, it does. But if “the 100-Year Life” really is going to become as commonplace as the ONS number-crunchers predict, there are other things to think about too, in particular: what will I do for fun when I hit 80, 90, 100, even perhaps 110?