Am I the only one appalled by the trend of babyboomers dreaming up their bucket list of things they’d like to see and do before they die?
Today bucket lists are big business, with a burgeoning number of books, blogs and websites devoted to perfecting them. The remoter parts of the planet are already full of intrepid oldies swimming with dolphins and admiring the Northern Lights as they cross off another exhausting experience.
Do you know what was on my father’s bucket list? Seeing me ‘reared’, as he put it. He was 40 when I was born, which isn’t so old these days, but he and my mother married very young, and my sister was already 15. He just wanted to be sure he’d see me grow up. That was his ambition.
No climbing Kilimanjaro or hugging gorillas before he died, rather just not dying too soon. Anything else was jam.
Marion McGilvary (pictured) questions the growing trend for people creating a bucket-list of activities to complete before they die
But now jam is old hat. You can’t boast about jam at a dinner party or Instagram it. Bucket lists, rather than being things you want to do when you’ve been told your death is imminent, are now just show-offy Facebook posts of the future.
Frankly, I’m okay, thanks. No, really. I don’t think I’m about to shuffle off to the great waiting room in the sky, but if my number is called, rest assured that I was not fussed I didn’t see Ayers Rock or the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.
A colleague is off to visit the latter next month, complete with armed guard. Terrific. Call that a holiday — is it something to do before you die, or the cause thereof?
At 59, I’ve had enough adventures. I’ve been bombed, flash-flooded and hurricaned while supposedly on holiday. I only need an earthquake for the full set.
I’ve taken an 11-hour bus trip across the Sinai desert with three small children, some chickens and a goat, with only four Marks & Spencer’s fruit scones for sustenance.
I’ve had a flat tyre in yet another desert with no jack to lift the car up and only half a bottle of water between us, and I’ve been swept through customs in Sweden by tall men with earpieces with my own personal bodyguard. I have thoroughly ticked the box marked ‘enough excitement for one lifetime’.
Is there something wrong with being content as you are? Like my father, I’ve seen my four children reared. Only one doesn’t speak to me. I’ve done my biological duty and replicated; isn’t that enough? Can’t I just take my bra off and read a book?
A few years ago I had a cancer scare which, luckily, was a false alarm, but faced with the possibility of my demise, I realised there was nothing I wanted to do except spend time with family.
She says her un-bucket list includes doing as she pleases including making memories with her family and avoiding activities that dice with death (file image)
Inca temples — if I was in the area, maybe, but I won’t make a special trip. Temples in general, actually. I’m sure there are beautiful ones, but my life ticks along without them. I’ve always fancied the Australian outback, but I don’t mind missing it.
There is a different set of priorities on my bucket list — and none involve a plane. Or a coach. Particularly as part of a group tour, with a guide who insists on telling you the history of every blade of grass.
Top of my ‘un-bucket’ list is to never go camping again. This is up there with never going to another festival, not even if I’m in the posh VIP caravans.
Included in this is not queuing for a shower in a field just because a band I never really liked in my youth have come out of retirement to headline. Nope. I’ll catch it on BBC4 if I can be bothered to stay up late.
I also swear never to wear wellies again. They are cold, uncomfortable and unflattering. I wore them to school every time it snowed — nobody can convince me it was a style choice. Especially with legs skinny enough to let snow gather inside.
Marion believes she doesn’t need to find herself and that it’s a consolation of age to not have to do the things you hated when you were younger (file image)
I have no desire to go to India, or on a silent retreat. I can speak to people at home quite easily, and India can manage without another former coloniser going and finding it all exotic.
I don’t give tuppence if I don’t see the sun rise over Machu Picchu — I paid a vast sum for one of my kids to have the privilege of roughing it (funny how back-to-basics experiences cost so much), freezing for three nights in a tent on the way up, and I’ve seen his photos. That’ll do me.
Nor do I feel the need to do a Cheryl Strayed (author of Wild) and hike the Pacific Crest Trail to find myself. I know where I am already — on the sofa with a cat on my knee, or in the greenhouse singing to tomato plants.
One consolation of age is letting yourself never do the things you hated when young — like going to the gym. I can ride a stationary bike with the best of them, but don’t ask me to climb up a rope or do a cross-country run in my pants in the rain.
So why is it that, as the clock begins to tick down, we get these urges to do ungodly activities before we snuff it?
Marathon running. Yes, you get endorphin highs, but you get those from making love, and that doesn’t involve getting out of bed. Bungee jumping: my arthritic spine would snap. Paragliding, free-fall parachuting. Whoopee. Let’s dice with death as a practice for death.
I get enough exhilaration trying to get off a moving bus without falling down the stairs. I don’t need to excite myself by leaping into an abyss with a rubber string tied round my ankle or a plastic bag strapped to my back.
I want a quiet life. Seeing my kids’ three-year-old half-sister enjoy her first Halloween dressed as a cow was better than all the tea plantations in China. My un-bucket list is to do as I darn well please — and that means, mostly, absolutely nothing.