The trick to avoiding dementia, according to a new book, is to take up an activity in which you have shown no previous ability. This is according to the US professor Dr Tommy Wood in his book, The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age.
Wood says, for instance, that the already skilled musician will get little out of practising on their instrument. It is the amateur whose brain will “get more stimulus”.
Suddenly, all my failures in life are rendered as positives. Thank God I’ve spent my life being hopeless at most things. Now comes the payback. I have an anti-dementia superpower that is not available to others.
With music, I’m onto an absolute winner. How I pity those friends who were superb on guitar or piano, winning admiring glances from all those around them, while people like me stared at their shoes. Oh, it’s not like I didn’t try. For three long years, I attended a weekly lesson at Spiro’s Motel, Northbourne Avenue, Canberra, where I was taught in the small, cluttered office by the owner’s 20-something son, who charged $4.50 an hour.
We spent the first two years on Cat Stevens’ Morning Has Broken, before deciding it was unfair to continue to torture a perfectly good song. We moved onto Ruby Tuesday for the final year, me sticking out my tongue as I tried to achieve each chord change. Every note was preceded by a gap so long that Spiro’s son would take the opportunity to let loose a loud sigh, as if he were dreaming of the sweet release of death.
At the start of what would have been the fourth year, my young teacher decided he’d rather spend his Wednesday afternoons working on the motel’s front desk. Even for $4.50, it just wasn’t worth it. This signalled the end of my musical ambitions. Until now! Ruby Tuesday: brace yourself, I’m back.
But before I pick up that guitar, let me mourn those poor bastards who were good at music from the start. Of course, their musical skills won them the attention of many attractive lovers, but is that really any substitute for brain health in your 70s?
I was even worse at languages. Forget the three years I wasted on the guitar, I wasted four years on trying to learn German. I now find myself able to order two beers in German, but little else. There was a time that I learnt the phrase by rote – “zwei bier, bitte” – together with the addendum “and my friend will pay for them”. That last part has long disappeared, meaning – on any rare trips to the German club – I always have to pay. Four years of study and I have three words and no spare change.
What’s worse, I cannot pronounce any language, even if I have the words sitting in front of me. Any attempt at French will cause people to flee the room.
Again, how lucky am I? My wife, who picks up languages as others pick up socks, is left feeling jealous. Not for her ability to defy dementia by learning a new vocabulary. Her brain, language-wise, has already been stretched this way and that. She’ll be forced to develop an interest in golf memorabilia. Or battleships of the First World War. Or the genome of the mosquito.
Meanwhile, I’ll be floating in some Mexican cenote, jabbering away in my newly acquired Spanish, and offering any future friends a serenade of Ruby Tuesday.
I was also hopeless at sport. I still remember games of school cricket in which I hid at the edge of the oval (is that what’s it called?) hoping nothing would come my way. It was, of course, the worst place to hide, as there would inevitably be one of those balls hit high into the sky, only to tumble downwards, heading directly into my outstretched hands, the ball seeming to move so slowly that every spectator and every player had time to watch its trajectory, down, down, down, my hands reaching hopefully skywards.
At which point I’d drop it.
Again, what joy. Having developed zero hand-eye co-ordination, I’m now in a position to challenge my brain in a wholly new way. Those other boys – captain of the cricket team, hero of the rugby field, champion of the tennis court – have nothing left to learn. They’ve had their moment in the sun, and must now either shuffle off to the dementia ward or develop an interest in something so dull they’ve left it unexplored for the last six decades.
Lapidary! A barbed wire collection! Memorising the early songs of Bill and Boyd!
While they, sad saps, are busy with their dire new hobbies, you’ll see me bathed in sunshine. I’ll be the one marching around the neighbourhood – tennis racquet in one hand, a language podcast on my headphones, and a guitar slung over my shoulder.
I just wonder if Spiro’s son is still around. Maybe we could take up the lesson where we left off in 1974. The only question: whether we’ve now given Morning Has Broken sufficient time to recover?
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