It was going to take something or someone a bit special to kick-start my blogging after a lull of over three months. And that something/someone was Hugh.
Hugh’s the 91-year-old father and father in law of the couple with a holiday apartment above ours in Spain. And he’s just been to visit – making the journey from the UK on his own. At his advanced years that’s an exploit in itself but it is only a fraction of the story.
Hugh is a stop at nothing character who does a mini-workout every day, including press ups. For much of the past ten years he’s been the main career of his wife who has Alzheimer’s. And he’s already planning to celebrate his 100th birthday with a parachute jump. And my money is on him doing it.
The planned parachute adventure should be no surprise as Hugh celebrated hitting 90 with his first flying lesson. Yet he also did something to mark the occasion that seems to me to have been an even bolder step – and it’s what applied a boot to my rear end to get the blogging hat on again.
Hugh marked his 90th birthday by changing his name. Take that in slowly.
For the previous 90 years – child, boy and man – Hugh had been ‘Basil’. Or, to many, simply ‘Bas’. But then he drew a line and made the dramatic change. From now on it was to be Hugh or nothing.
I’ve no idea how long he’d thought about ditching the old. He may even regret not doing so a decade or two sooner. But more important, how easy – how very easy – it would have been for he who was then ‘Basil’ to shrug of his misgivings and aspirations with a ‘I’ve not got long to go anyway, so does it really matter’.
How little it would have taken to talk himself out of something that he’d probably aspired to do for a very long time anyway. But he didn’t because that’s not Hugh. Which is what really inspires me and, I hope, you.
Put simply, Hugh’s life lesson to us is ‘it is never too late to go for it’. Not even at 90. Thank you young man and here’s to your 100th.
