FEAST OR FAMINE

  The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age  by Gladys McGarey (2023) is a self-care health book for people of any age.   The title says it all. Dr Gladys McGarey, at 102 years of age, writes words of wisdom. Gladys, co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, was still a practicing holistic physician when she wrote this book. She says that this book is “a story that teaches as much as it inspires.” When subscribing to her Foundation for Living Medicine newsletter, readers become part of the “BeGlad Family.”   Gladys Louise Taylor, born in November 1920 in India, travelled to America at the age of 16 to study, where she met and married Bill McGarey. While doing her residency degree at the Women’s Medical College, she was the only female resident in the hospital in 1946, while she was pregnant with her first child, but she had no living quarters – and therefore, no bedroom – so she slept on the examining...

Daphne Selfe, at 90 years of age, has been awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for 2019. She was recognized for her services to women and fashion. The New Year honours lists recognise the achievements and service of people across the United Kingdom and The Commonwealth. The New Year Honours List was published in The Gazette, the official newspaper of the Crown, on Thursday 28 December 2018. Along with the Birthday Honours, they are the most significant announcement of civilian and military gallantry awards. The British Empire Medal (formally the British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service) is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown. It was created in 1922 to replace the original medal, which had been established in 1917 as part of the Order of the British Empire.   Daphne has been modelling for 70 year...

More than 28% of Japan’s population is now officially classified as elderly, according to its government data. Elderly is over the age of 65 years. Japan’s rate of 28.1% is the highest rate in the world as the first wave of baby boomers enter their twilight years.  In Japan, people aged 65 or older make up a record 35.6 million (28.1%) of the country’s total population. People aged 70 or older accounted for 20.7% of the population, surpassing 20% for the first time. Other countries with high rates of people aged 65 years or older include: Italy with 23.3%, Portugal with 21.9%, and Germany with 21.7%, according to data from the United Nations.  MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author of:-  Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Into the Thickening Fog (2017) is set in winter in Far North Russia. Eduard Filippov is a Russian theatre director, and a French theatre has agreed to stage his latest drama. This would be the most prestigious and lucrative offer of his career.  Reluctantly, Filippov travels back to his hometown in the Far North to tell his long-time collaborator and friend that the assignment does not include him. Filippov has been hired to do the assignment alone. Filippov needs to deliver the news to his friend in person to avoid upsetting him. However, the travel back to his hometown is during one of the worst winters on record. Then the power cuts out and he is left in the bitter cold, freezing to death.  To survive, he takes to drinking vodka, and reminiscing about his past, his childhood, and his ambitions: ‘he suddenly saw his fifteen-year-old self trailing off to school in the wintry morning darkness and the impenetrable fog that blanketed the town for severa...

Over half of the population of Africa is under 25 years of age. This makes the African youth population the youngest population in the world. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

The Woman Next Door (2016) is set in Cape Town, South Africa. Two women live next to each other in an affluent suburb of Cape Town, but they could not be more opposite: ‘Hortensia, black and small-boned, Marion, white, large. Marion’s husband dead, Hortensia’s not yet. Marion and her brood of four, Hortensia with no children.’ ‘We are not on the same side,’ says Hortensia to Marion. ‘Whatever you say, I disagree. However you feel, I feel the opposite. At no point in anything are you and I on the same side.’ Hortensia James, a black woman, married Peter, a white man, almost dead. Marion Agostino, a white woman, married Max, a rich Italian, now dead. Both women have had successful careers, now retired. They are in their 80s with too much time on their hands – except to grow their gardens and their hosility towards each other. Bitter enemies. When Peter dies he leaves a ‘cryptic’ will, which he had recently changed. How will Hortensia react to that? And then, during the...