Razzamatazz

July 4^th 2006

I was thinking this morning, about Kristin Scott Thomas, like you do, and how much of my future life I’d be prepared to give up for a night of unbridled passion with her. A year? No. Even for an all-nighter with the luscious Kristin, the woman of my dreams, a year is just too much to give up. I’m sixty eight now, I’m still quite active, I still have a fair few of my faculties functioning more or less properly, so I’ll still be well able to derive quite a bit of enjoyment out of another twelve months on earth, even if part of the enjoyment isn’t slipping Kristin Scott Thomas a length.

A month then? Would I give up a month of whatever life I’ve got left for a night with Kristin? Yes, that would seem to be fair swap, I’d probably go for that.

But would I feel the same about it if I asked myself the same thing at age ninety? Question – “Razzamatazz, tomorrow is your ninetieth birthday. You can either spend it in the company and in the bed of the delectable Kristin Scott Thomas and her eager beaver, then drop dead the day after? Or you can live on until your ninety first birthday, thus enduring another twelve months of rheumatoid arthritis in every bone of your body, incontinence, Alzheimer’s, spondylitis, hardening of the arteries, varicose veins, rickets and death watch beetle before you pop your clogs? No contest. It would be Kristin, without a doubt.

This poses the question – at what age would a man or woman give up twelve months of life in exchange for living out their dream, say at the age of thirty?

For example a man might fancy being a multi-millionaire for a week, He would enjoy the multi-millionaire lifestyle with all its trappings – the Ferrari, the luxury penthouse flat in Mayfair, holiday homes in the south of France and Antigua, the friendship of the rich and famous, the finest clothes and accessories, the finest wines (or lager if he’s a lout), the finest food, and of course an array of beautiful women at his beck and call and between his sheets whenever he wanted them. But if he accepted this he would die at age sixty (if he hadn’t already died from all the excesses he’d subjected himself to whilst he was enjoying his multi-millionaire lifestyle, that is). A bit young, perhaps? Seventy then? Eighty?

Answers please in my Comments section, stating your fantasy and at what age you’d be prepared to die in order to be allowed to live it. Your fantasy must be of no more than one week’s duration.