Life and death sentences

AMONG those I know who've turned or are turning 70 during 2009 are Michael Kirby, Germaine Greer, Andrew Peacock and John Pilger.

Plus John Howard - and me, his greatest fan. Though born within hours of each other John and I have different star signs, thus saving astrology from embarrassment. And had he not blown out the candle that was JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald would be blowing out 70 candles in 2009.

Talking of the fascinating and assassinating: two other leaders brought down in their prime share the astrological sign of Cancer, the crustacean that gave its name to the most dreaded of diseases. (Pity those of us whose star sign is a death sentence.) Gough Whitlam, who turned 93 on July 11, the day before my 70th, shares the fateful, fatal sign with Julius Caesar. And on the same theme, the Victorian Police have been keeping an eye on a bloke who's determined to assassinate both Howard and Adams. A professed suicide bomber, he aspires to getting both of us at the same time, providing yet another reason for the ex-PM and I to avoid each other's company.

But enough of star signs. Even while my four daughters - Rebecca, Meaghan, Saskia and Aurora - were helping me celebrate (sic) the end of my life according to the biblical allotment of "three score years plus 10", I was doing the following calculations on my iPhone:

Seventy years. Equals 840 months. Equals 3640 weeks. Equals 25,480 days. A rotten deal! A short life followed by a death sentence from a mean-spirited, miserly deity who has, after all, all eternity to dole out.

Would it hurt some vast eternal plan if we were all given the life-span of Methuselah? Five hundred years (equals 182,500 days) would still be on the short side, but not so brief and brutal. Time to think more, read lots, learn lots of stuff, even relax a bit. Whereas the lousy 613,200 hours of the Old Testament quota hardly gives you time to scratch yourself, let alone become expert in cosmology, quantum mechanics and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Plus becoming fluent in a few dozen languages. Speaking personally, I'm still limited to broken English. Yet now, according to God, I'm fresh out of time. Thank God I don't believe in God.

I remember doing the figures for Kerry Packer. "You might have six billion in the bank but you were born with a lousy 600,000 hours. Or in Network Nine terms, 600,000 60-minutes. Not even an hour millionaire. And now you're on the verge of bankruptcy."

A few months later Kerry carked it for the first time, proving hours to be the most valuable of currencies. You can't buy hours with your Amex card or raise them on the stock market or gain them through insider trading. While a Packer might buy a little time with expensive medical care, a donated kidney and a team of A-list surgeons, a humble employee, perhaps a kid sweeping up the poo of your polo ponies, can still outlive you by decades.

I've got any number of potentially terminal diseases. Thus far they're squabbling among themselves and I pretty much ignore them. But all too soon one will tap me on the shoulder and say "gotcha". This makes getting another 10 years unlikely - but even if I did make it to 80, that's only another 3650 days. Imagine how poor you'd feel if all you had to spend was another $3650.

To make matters worse, I couldn't find the car keys today - a sure sign of Early Onset - so for many of the 3650 days I'll be non-compos. Even if the perceptions remain sharp, you're expected to sleep for eight hours in 24. So you waste a third of them. Three cheers for insomnia.

I know I speak for Michael, Germaine and both Johns (Howard and Pilger) when I say we're not too happy with this 70 thing.

Compassionately, my family spared me a cake with candles - the blaze, that variation of the funeral pyre, would have triggered the smoke alarm. But they did insist on Happy Birthday, with Sassy playing the violin. Happy Birthday is an oxymoron set to dirge-like music, glummer than Chopin's Death March. It was like a scene from King Lear. Four daughters being lovely just before the fates turf Dad on to the blasted heath for his final mad scene.