IT’S a pain in the neck – having a body. In fact, it’s a pain everywhere. By the time you shuffle off, assuming a normal life span, every bit of your torso will have suffered some ailment or ache, and that’s before we come to your insides, which would turn your stomach.

And then there’s the aesthetic inadequacy of your body: skinny; fat; skinny and fat; long bits; short bits; big nose; thin lips; batty ears; daft elbows; knobby knees; varicose veins; little muscles; big tummies. But enough about me.

A study by Australian and New Zealand researchers has found that men and women are most content with their bodies after the age of 60.

Women were unhappiest about theirs between the ages of 19 and 24, but happy enough by 60, while men were discontented body-wise between 29 and 34, and again from 44 to 49, but cool with it by 60. I should stress that’s in terms of shape, size and appearance, and nothing to do with aches and pains.

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As you age, keeping down a tummy that wants to explore your thighs becomes harder and harder, and I can’t think why people are contented with that. Nor do I remember any of us worrying about our body shapes or size when youthful, and we came in all shapes and sizes.

As I understand it, from various tweets, the next stage after old age is death. This sounds fantastic. I’m assuming there’s an afterlife, though that hope has taken a knock of late.

I’ve read a bit about near-death experiences, in which folk stoat doon a tunnel of light and come oot in a bucolic heaven, all rolling lawns and tweeting birds. It sounds quite good. But, latterly, particularly on yonder YouTube, many such people have reported meeting characters from yon Bible, which suggests it’s all a daft fantasy based on legacy cultural beliefs.

Lord knows, it was bad enough reading that your relatives would all bound forward to greet you. No thanks! Should that happen to me, I’ll be doing a runner to the downstairs escalator.

Nothing is all good. There’s always a down side. Even in Heaven, you’ll probably find cliques and high domestic rates to pay for everything. There’ll be nobody to empty the bins because who’s going to do that in Heaven? Who keeps these lawns trim, and do they make a hellish racket with machinery bought at Heavenbase?

But, still, maybe what you get is what you see in your imagination, so there’ll be different Heavens for all. The grass will take care of itself. Detritus will simply vanish.

Sticking with the fantasy, surely the best part of dying and becoming pure spirit will be not having a physical body. You won’t need your reading glasses, hearing aids, trusses, corsets, sticks or wheelchairs.

There’s be no midges to bite your arms. No rashes or weird outbreaks. When you wake in the morning, since at last we’ll get a good night’s kip, your hair will not be sticking up all over the place. It might not be real hair, but who wants that nowadays anyway? Nothing but trouble.

There’ll be no trouble when we’re nothing, no thing, no stupid body to drag us down, itching and aching and creaking. We’ll be pure spirit. I’m not sure about the script as regards enjoying a fish supper, pint or perchance a cheeky wee steak bake.

These are corporeal pleasures with effects on your health on this physical plane. In Heaven, perhaps you can have them all, with no effect on body shape. On Earth, meanwhile, I commend those over-60s who claim to be happy with their bodies. But the truth is they are either lying to researchers or just reacting with weary acceptance.

Credit squeezebox

AM I starting to go mental? (Readers’ chorus: “What d’ya mean startin’?”). The fact is this: I’ve started listening to the accordion. For pleasure.

It’s an instrument I’d always deplored, perhaps because one of the worst evenings of my life was spent, in the line of duty, at an accordion and fiddle festival. It also seemed to be the case that, every time you switched on Radio Scotland, that was all you heard.

I still have trouble with the way that Scottish dance accordion music starts and ends on that same long note. However, I’d started to realise that there were times when, albeit subliminally, I’d enjoyed the accordion.

It featured heavily in my one of my favourite films, Amelie, and my favourite vlogger, Jonna Jinton, plays the theme tune from that on her accordion, inherited from her grandfather.

Accordion music also accompanies the old video tape of my trip to Norway in 1995. Today, one of my neighbours sometimes erupts with it, and I rather enjoy it, as I’m sure everyone else in the village does. More power to his elbows (or fingers).

In the interests of truth, I must decree authoritatively that no musical instrument in history has been as expressive as the electric guitar (plus effects pedals). But there’s something to be said for letting rip with the good old squeezebox too.

Bunter banter

OW! Gug-gug! Yooch! These immortal words feature in the learned journal that I have before me, from a tiny personal comic collection.

That publication is The Magnet, from 14 June 1930, price 2d. The eloquent words emanate from enigmatic character Billy Bunter, and are occasioned by his school chums pouring a kettle of cold water over his head. What larks!

More larks were evident in Britannia Minor this week, when it emerged that Scottish police called a mission to guard Boris Johnson “Operation Bunter”. The codename was dropped when word got out, with a source telling the Sun: “Several people pointed out the foolishness of calling it after a fat, posh English public schoolboy – not least given the PM is known for being a bit portly.”

The source added: “Operation Aeration was selected as the alternative. But I’m not sure moving away from Billy Bunter to a name that implies the PM is full of air is much of an improvement.” It’s appalling the way the Prime Minister of England and the Other Bits is treated whenever he visits Scotland. Just because he’s a Tory lardbucket.

Flying visitation

THE latest theory about vaguely irritating extraterrestrials reportedly blundering aboot the planet is that they are young aliens on their gap year.

The claim follows signs that the US, if not the UK, defence authorities are taking the potential threat of flying saucers seriously and, er, writing reports about it. Colin Lyall, leader of Aliens Anonymous, for folk abducted to spaceships, welcomed the new public debate. He said: “It will help us to find out more about what they are. If they’re tourists or alien kids coming to Earth for a laugh on their gap year, I don’t know.”

Colin’s own experience of being probed in unpleasant places highlights the potential error in assuming the aliens are benign beings here to warn us that we’re making a bags of the planet. They sound more like Japanese whalers claiming they’re carrying out “research” as a pretext for cruel exploitation.

Mind you, there are aliens and aliens, and if the more amiable ones are coming for a laugh on their gap year, good luck to them. Wonder if they get to travel on a Young Persons Saucer-Card?

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