DANGER: FALLING ROCKS

I never know what the appropriate response is to those road signs. I always wonder whether I'm supposed to say 'Oh, OK, I'll just turn round and go home again.' Of course, on the kinds of roads that have signs like that, turning round is a proposition more hypothetical than realistic.

This, reader, is a metaphor for Life, which too often holds up signs saying 'Wrong Way, Go Back!' even though the ageing process does not have a reverse gear. And so when I see economists sagely saying 'The next few years are going to be tricky' and sounding like they think they deserve a special cookie for knowing that, I reflect that I've been telling myself that the next few years are going to be tricky since about August 1969. And I have never yet been wrong.