It’s a good day when you learn your regular colonoscopy is next year, not next month. It’s a good day when you finally order a new pair of reading specs and go for the radical, rather than the elegant and arrive home to find the reminder that you’re due for your bi-annual breast screen. Surprise! A mate said after turning 60, life becomes like maintaining an old car; one expensive scare after another; maintenance and repairs with a view to extending reasonable health for as long as possible. Bugger. My mum’s approach was no doctors. No breast-screen. No Pap smear. No colonoscopy. Just every six months to the dentist and every six weeks to the hairdresser. Head. Sand. Buried. It worked for her. Dear reader how goes it for you? Our health insurance premiums rose again this week and I know that there will be no health insurance once I retire. So, this week I bought my first-ever bottle of vitamins. They were on sale. I’m no expert, but I’ll be buggered if I’m going to drop nine pills a day when a bowl of salad greens will suffice. I returned the pills. I’ve also given up chocolate. Well, this week, ’til the footy on Friday night. A big win this week – now known as my old lady ‘hack’ – was when I discovered I can get my specs to stay on my head (while I cook) by wearing a head band. You’re welcome. Another win this week was when I fed the blokes a pile of barley, roast vegetables and yoghurt and no one missed their meat. Look away if you’re one of those men who is persisting with his flava sava. You know what I mean. Your Shannon Knowles. Your Tony Carbone Tony was on tele this week. He is the lawyer who has launched a class action in Victoria for anyone who has lost their job due to COVID-19. Tony best illustrates why men should shave those nasty little things off … right now. Go into your bathroom. Pick up your trusty Gillette and flick the little ode to ’90s bad taste down the plughole. With my own facial hair limited to a moustache and errant cheek hair, I continue to be amazed when I see that such little beasties keep appearing on blokes of all ages, stages, shapes and sizes. There are several Tasmanian real estate agents who wear theirs with pride, but it was Tony that tickled my fancy on Wednesday morning. I was barely awake; I had watched the final moments of Le Tour Highlights on SBS and switched to my ABC for a news update when I was confronted by Tony. Why Tony? Why? That little piece of dark fluff on your chin distracts from your chiselled self. It does have another name but I still cannot fathom how a tiny piece of fluff on a man’s chin can do any more than annoy the woman who may or may not have to wake alongside such an abomination. That hideous little piece of fluff on a man’s chin … usually no more than a centimetre that looks frankly, absurd. One word. Feather. Use a feather and shave the little sucker into oblivion. My favourite learning this week was about travel. I read a report about what I will call “small” travel. That is travel limited to your immediate state/region – where you discover the hidden, where your carbon footprint’s minimised and the benefit to your local economy is maximised. I predict “small” travel will become like the 100-mile diet. A trend that is a healthy and enjoyable journey to something different.