Some people have a peculiar approach to death. They accept that one day they will die and get on with their lives. Me, I'm still struggling with that whole "plunging headlong into the insensible, eternal void" business.
I intend to be a burden to my children for as long as I possibly can, my liver-spotted claws clinging insistently to the nurse's wrist as she tends my life-support machine.
To find out how I might achieve this, I went to Okinawa, off the southern tip of Japan. For some decades now, the people of Okinawa have been living longer than any other on earth, their women especially so, with an average life expectancy of 86.88 years (in the UK, it's 81.5 years). And they aren't just