Ninety-one year old Hugh has a lesson for us all – that it’s never too late.

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 100^th 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 90^th 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 100^th.

When all else fails try failure – it’s much underrated

Failure gets a bad press – that’s how I see it.

Sure, I accept there some spectacular nose dives for which no one should take credit. I think of NASA’s project to launch a supper space probe to Mars. Who did they put on the job? The world’s biggest and best brains, that’s who.

As a result, the Mars Climate Orbiter rose majestically from Cape Canaveral on a clear December day. Nine months later its trundle though space ended by smashing headlong into the red planet’s mysterious surface.  Thus wrecking the project, denting some huge egos and wasting $300 million in one big bang.

A natural disaster? A malfunction of the equipment? Nope. Just the failure of those mega-brains to realise that one part of the team had been using English units of measurement and the other the metric system.

Pause for a moment. Capture the wonder of such an epic c#ck up and wonder. It’s an order of merit failure. The kind deserving all the nominations at the Global Failure Awards – where no one comes off looking good.

But that’s not the only kind of failure. Sure it’s a kind I like most, as it makes my lurching progress through my short span of history look somewhat less asinine. But there’s a better kind of failure out there that truly deserves an Oscar of its own.

It’s the failure that comes from ‘having a go’. That’s not a very technical term I confess. And such a concept deserves something more robust and flamboyant. But it will do for now.

Failure from ‘having a go’ is the kind of failure that leaves you richer then before and more valuable to yourself and others. The problem is, when that kind of failure becomes our experience we are likely to be so distracted by the hurt that we miss the true value of what has happened.

But when the dust has settled and the emotional bruises are hurting less, it would be good to see how this kind of good failure takes us forward.

At the very least we are now better informed. To quote former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Or in the words of Benjamin Franklin the American statesman, scientist, philosopher and inventor “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways that didn’t work”.

As basket ball legend Michael Jordan pointed out, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. And 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

For me the classic example of ‘having a go’ failure was Peter, the follower of Jesus, sinking after taking a few steps on the water.  He’d seen his Master walking over the waves and was open to having a go himself if Jesus invited him to do so.

His ‘having a go’ resulted in Peter walking further on water than anyone before or since. Sure, he didn’t make it all the way. But just think what he achieved in the process of having a go.

And to push a point, the failure that deserved no accolade at all was there in the same incident. It was the rest of the disciples safe and dry in the boat. It doesn’t take much talent or character to keep out of trouble. But, as a songwriter friend of mine sings, ‘I’d rather be lost on the ocean of life than safe in the harbour with you’.

As for my favourite failure quote it’s – “Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.” I just wish it wasn’t from the lips of Sven Goran Eriksson.

Spanish second-hand cars can teach us a lot about life.

There was no reason to expect buying a second-hand car in Spain would be different to anywhere else. Or that the experience would issue a small wake up call on life.

The need was simple. To find a used vehicle so as to save on the cost of car hire on our many visits to our place in Spain. The expectation was to run my eyes over a few second-hand care lots, compare the prices and Carlos was your uncle.

But not a bit of it. Because second-hand car lots in Spain seem as rare as rocking horse droppings. Even main dealers, I was to discover, are limited to a few assorted used cars and often not even with a price displayed. Which meant that a morning of phoning a long list of dealers revealed only a few options – almost all of which turned out to be a thumbs down.

‘How come?’ was what I wanted to know. And the answer is our European cousins have a very different outlook on cars and life than we Brits.

‘It’s like this’, explained my guide – a resident ex-pat of many years standing. ‘To a Spaniard a car is for life. Tell them you are thinking of trading in yours four years from new and they’ll wonder why you bought it in the first place. If is was good enough then why is it not good enough now?’

Spaniards, he explained, run a car until it either finally dies or is just about up to being given to a grandchild. More than that, the garage industry supports their efforts by working on the basis of repair rather than replace. Where you don’t find car lots you do see repair workshop after repair workshop.

Eat your heart out Kwik-Fit but that’s how it is. An exhaust can be repaired – and repaired and repaired. A water pump can be rebuilt. Just because a carburettor gets a cough it doesn’t have to be ripped out. Which is why garages in Spain don’t employ ‘fitters’ but ‘engineers’. Goodbye disposability and hello common sense.

And life’s lessons from all this? First, that our own drivenness (no pun intended) for the latest and best is only one way to live and may not be the best way. After all, aren’t  the choices involved designed to satisfy ego and fund shareholders more than anything else? Second, we should cherish the skills, experience and honest toil needed to repair and rebuild.

Reflecting on this had me mulling on the permanence and quiet contentment of so many Spanish marriages I’d observed – which seem to be founded on the same basis. And the way this contributes to life with a quality that, for us in the UK, is fast becoming history.

A link between the satisfaction-with-life quotient and a nation’s attitude to its automobiles? Maybe there is.

Meanwhile, I’d like to think my newly acquired five-year old Mazda 2 will run and run and run and run and run. How dare I plan for anything else?