Things to Do Before You Die!

Magazines have a habit of printing meaningless lists with the title 'Fifty Things to See/Hear/Do/Draw/Taste/Wring Out/Sing/Soil/Swim In (delete as applicable) Before You Die!  Recently I was trying to find something good to watch on telly and caught the tail end of a show on some obscure food channel called 'Twenty Foods to Try Before You Die!' (there's always an exclamation mark on these titles).  The last taste experience on this particular list was the Singaporean durian fruit; the one with a smell resembling blocked drains which is so strong you're forbidden to eat it in public places (there's a little sign on public transport featuring a picture of a durian fruit with a dramatic red line drawn through it, like our 'No Smoking' signs, which I thought was the most bizarre sign I'd ever seen until I went to a restaurant in St. Petersburg and saw the same sign featuring a picture of a gun instead).  I've never tried it, don't plan to and somehow I don't think the last words I'll ever croak will be "Bugger...I never got to try some of that stinky old fruit from Singapore.  This has been no LIFE, I tell you!"

But things do take on a bit more urgency when you're reminded that you have to get them done "before you die!"  I've got countless books and DVD box-sets on my shelves that I haven't got round to savouring yet.  Thinking about which of them I'll actually get to see "before I die!" is quite a sobering experience.  It puts the picking up of 'Jeremy Kyle - You Couldn't Make It Up' in perspective...if I started that and then I died tomorrow, would I really want it to be the very last book I ever read?  What if I was brandishing it as the moment of death arrived?  I'd just be labelled a chav, instead of the highly articulate and intelligent person I actually am, whose friend bought her a copy of the aforementioned book for her birthday as a joke gift.  I don't think that particular book would be on anybody's "quickly!! - read this before you die!" list.  Except perhaps Jeremy's Mum's...but then again maybe not; after all she'll already know the story, won't she?

But everything's essentially a to-do list for before you die.  Things like the washing up, making sure the cat litter's been changed properly and drawing Hitler moustaches on pictures of celebrities in the newspapers left out in the gym coffee lounge.  Even things like that, which when you really think about it make for a more worthy and grounded sort of life than eating durian or swimming with dolphins or climbing mountains.  Really, it does.