As time GOES BY

Colin’s become more aware of how important it is to seize the day

- COLIN HOGG

My mother used to like quoting classic Hollywood star Bette Davis on the subject of old age, with her famous line about it not being for sooks. Though, I think Bette, being American, said “wimps”.

She was a famously tough nut. Her gravestone carries the epitaph, “She did it the hard way.” I’ve visited it in Los Angeles.

My mother’s humbler gravestone doesn’t make any dramatic claims - just that she was much loved by her family. Mum wasn’t one for drama and would never have claimed that she did it, or anything else, the hard way, though she came through the bombs of World War II, and outlived so many people she cared for along her own way through life and into old age.