THE CHESHIRE CAT MAY VANISH BUT HIS PHILOSOPHY STAYS

Why is it, do you suppose, that though our bodies seem to age with increasing rapidity every year, our minds seem set to a biological cycle altogether? Having advanced already into the silver age of the bus pass, concessions at the theatre and free prescriptions, I find my mind and outlook little different to how they seemed in my early thirties.

Like most of us, I suppose, I live in a dissonant world of thinking I am thirty years younger than I really am. Until, of course, I look in the mirror or wardrobe or spend a day twisting and bending in the garden. Then I start moaning and complaining. The mind may be strong but its corporeal reality is weak. Can anything be done to stop the body ageing twice as fast as the mind?

I was pondering this philosophical question the other day, relaxing in the sunshine after what had seemed a particularly hard session in the garden, when a smiling face appeared over the garden wall. It belonged to my neighbour's thirty-something son, Philip, who had been visiting his Mum.

As my garden is elevated, the wall in question is a retaining wall. Philip's grinning head therefore appeared at lawn level, disembodied and looking like a species of Cheshire Cat. Though he was standing and I reclining I still had to look down at him.

Philip is a musician and one of the most optimistic and even-tempered people I know.
Some years ago he invited me to his wedding - a curious affair conducted to a pagan ritual - somewhere up in the mountains of North Wales. The ceremony took place in a woodland glade to which we all marched, chanting, behind a bizarre battery of pipes and drums.

Everyone was dressed in their best finery - well, this was a wedding - but in costumes loosely based on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' We were a fantastic collection of Titiania's and Oberon's, Pyramus and Thisbe's, elves and fairies, with an assortment of Tudor monarchs thrown in for good measure.

Making use of bridegroom's privileges, Philip himself appeared as Mozart in a splendid eighteenth century frock coat and breeches and thus was he joined with his Hippolyta, while we tied ribbons to the trees roundabout, some of which may even be there to this day.

At the party afterwards we drank mead, I seem to remember, rather than wine and ate off wooden platters and a very good time was had by all. It must have been the most memorable wedding I have ever attended. Sadly the couple have since parted, though in the spirit of that eclectic gathering they remain friends.

When he's not composing or teaching Philip likes to explore, trekking over the Andes and similar inhospitable places. I reminded him of this as I lay aching in my chair. "I feel as if I have just climbed to Machu Picchu," I groaned.

But Philip just smiled. "Do you know", he said, "the first day of trekking I did feel just like that. With altitude sickness, a headache, aching limbs, I just wanted to go home. But then I thought that I shouldn't be moaning. Instead I should remember how lucky I was to be amongst such scenery. Rather than feel weary and miserable I told myself I should feel grateful for the privilege of being allowed to do be there. And as soon as I was able to make that mental shift, from complaining to feeling grateful and privileged, then suddenly I had more energy and the pain went away."

He laughed a little. His face at the level of my feet almost made him seem like a little Buddha. And I thought, "of course, he's right." We do all complain so much that we forget to remember how lucky most of us are.

So maybe this is the way to stop the body ageing quite so fast: to feel grateful for what we have, rather than to complain about what we have not; to be grateful for the garden and the sunshine rather than the aches and the pains and the cost.

His face disappeared, like the Cheshire Cat. In Alice's tale the Cat vanishes but the grin remains. In this case Philip's smiling head disappeared, but, as you can see from this tale, his philosophy hasn't.