“Doctor, I’m sorry to disturb you. Alexey Voronkov’s grandson is asking to see you.” Vadim’s secretary hovered uncertainly in the doorway of his office. “He says he doesn’t want to come in, but could you come out to him?”

Intrigued, Vadim rose from his desk and followed Katya into the waiting room of the oncology clinic. It was Friday afternoon. He noted with satisfaction that the place was almost deserted; this meant his team had worked efficiently to clear their patients before the weekend. Vadim sometimes worked Saturdays on difficult emergency cases, but most of his operations were scheduled for…

First, a disclaimer

I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a patient — yet. But I am a 54-year-old-woman who has gained fourteen pounds (6.3kg) since going through menopause, and I now weigh about thirty-five pounds (15.8kg) more than my average adult weight.

Close to home

Several members of my family have developed type 2 diabetes after fifty and are now taking medication to control their blood sugar levels.

In each case, the doctor told them initially that their conditions could be controlled, and even reversed, by making lifestyle changes.

In each case, these lifestyle changes proved too limiting and too long-term. Good intentions are all…

The happiest man in Moscow is not Russian at all, he’s Cuban. But his wife, Yelena, is Russian, and this story begins with her.

When Yelena was nineteen she had one passion in life and that passion was for dancing. Since the age of seven, she had taken dance class after dance class — ballet, tap, jazz, ballroom, modern. Yelena took them all and was good at them all. …

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The noise swam into my sleep but I pushed it away. This dream was far too good to abandon. The tapping came again and I made the laughing girl in the red dress click her heels on the dance floor. Hanging on, just hanging on.

“Eduardo, wake up.”

It wasn’t the girl in red speaking. I shrugged the gentle hand off my shoulder and groaned, turning over in my warm cocoon.

“Eduardo. I need you.”

Urgency and pleading sank through layers of consciousness and the girl in her red dress faded away. …

If there’s one thing we can count on in life, it’s that we can’t count on anything. We’ll allow the exceptions of death and taxes, as Bullock and Defoe wrote, and Franklin made famous in his letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy.

… in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes

Benjamin Franklin

Our brains make us naturally resistant to uncertainty and change because we interpret them as threatening. We can’t predict their outcome and so we try to avoid them. This aversion is a basic survival instinct for Homo sapiens.

However, if we think…

How many sunrises have you watched in your life? Have you ever seen the sun rise over the sea?

My answers to those questions are ‘not enough’ and ‘only once.’ It has taken me until the age of 54 to watch the sun come up over the sea, but I experienced that beauty today.

Like most nights, I found myself making a trip to the bathroom in the dark last night (one of the many joys of middle age). As I emerged, ready to crawl back into bed, my 22-year-old son appeared on the landing beside me, jacket on.

“Hiya…

We live in such a youth-orientated world, we’re often made to feel past our sell-by dates as we hit middle-age and beyond. Popular culture is mainly aimed at people in their teens and twenties. The media, fashion, music, and leisure — by fifty-plus, we’re no longer the target audience.

It’s easy to feel out of step, especially if we’re struggling to get to grips with new technology. Life certainly doesn’t feel easier when you can’t work out how to follow a church service on Zoom in lockdown, or download an app on your phone to pay for parking. …

The early years

When you’re seven, life is infinite. The teenage years are still around that next bend, over the hump that is ten. Adulthood feels like an improbable dream. Jobs? Relationships? Children? They’re so far ahead you can’t imagine them, so you believe they will probably never happen to you.

(I remember being nine years old and getting ready to go abroad on holiday for the first time — to France, as it happens. Because I couldn’t picture myself there, I was convinced I was going to die before reaching foreign shores. Spoiler: I didn’t.)

And then you’re a teenager and adulthood…