TONFERNS THROUGH THE AGES

TONFERNS THROUGH THE AGES

I can’t remember any speeches anymore. You know I’m sixty-five. So I have to read them.

I thank my wife Edna for her love and understanding, for her dedication in bringing up our children well, for her encouragement in all my aspirations and for her constant companionship and steadfast support during the last 37 years.

I thank my children for their love and respect, and care and support.

Denise is always there for us, and is able to come up with the most logical solutions and the most elaborate surprises.

Denzil is very loving and always passionate about whatever he does. And he is always there when we need him. He also comes up with convenient solutions that somehow always involve the use of computer technology.

Dahlia is ever present to keep our spirits high with her music, humour and energy.  I am blessed and my life is full of love and friendship.

My parents are no longer living, but I owe them for the good life that I have today. They made sure that I got an education, but more importantly nurtured me with their love.

Lately my friends have been saying: “Hey, Tony, you don’t look sixty-five”. At this point in time I’d like to mention that I owe my youthful looks to Edna’s wonderful cooking.

Nevertheless, since I really can’t believe like most of you that I’m sixty-five – I insist on a recount.

They say when you are sixty-five you first tend to forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly. But my dear relative and friends, you will never be forgotten. Thank you for your friendship during all these years.

I must say that being sixty-five was not easy – it took me 23,801.5 days to get here, including that extra day in leap years . Having been born in the roaring forties, life has been a great experience - studying through the swinging fifties, donning a Beatles haircut and sailing to Dubai in the sixties, getting married in the fabulous seventies, and learning to manage kids through the rocking eighties and digital nineties and completion of a great and fantastic decade in the 21^st century.

Now, it’s time to look on the brighter side.

From today I shall presume that I am twenty with 45 years experience.

Convert that into Celsius and it should be about 17 without wind-chill.

From now on I shall select only sweet tunes as they say the older the fiddle sweeter the tune. Or it may be the same fiddler, same fiddle, but a different tune. 

Have you ever wondered why sixty-five is considered as a great mile stone?

It’s very simple my friends - because if we were to count age in kilometres I would have been 104 years old today. Besides, who'd want to live that long eh?

Days of inflation are long gone for me. Inflation was supposed to be when I paid fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut when I had hair. I wasn't a show-off, but keeping the barber happy with a 50% tip meant that a good hair-cut was very important in my younger days. But inflation or no inflation – now I don’t have to worry about rising cost of hair-cuts, or even try to get mileage from my hair any more. And besides, a good collection of hats does the rest!

Finally, I’d like to say that today, as I embark on yet another 365-day journey around the sun, with wonderful friends and a loving family, I look forward to a wonderful year ahead. And after having completed 65 of these round trips already, which incidentally means a lot of experience, I am happy to be alive to tell the tale. I thank the Lord for a good life, a good wife, beautiful kids and excellent friends.