Once you’ve hit 50 or more, you’ll hear news of long-lost friends coping with critical illness, some with not too long to live. Obituaries in the papers, previously inconsequential, now mean something. Parents, once our protectors are now our dependents. Children have become the carers. Siblings, once our partners-in-crime, running roughshod through the kampung , are now old, overly cautious, that spark of spontaneity snuffed by age.