Is Bob Nagel Really Dorian Gray?

The legions of his friends, admirers and worshipers will rejoice to hear that ageless Bob Nagel continues to confound and bemuse the humourless sourpusses who insist that decrepitude and infirmity must come inevitably to us all. Facing his 84^th birthday on the near horizon, Robert continues to entertain and amuse whilst inveigling his way into the heart of everyone he ever meets.  He fells trees, rides bicycle, knows and sings every show tune that ever was. What is the man’s secret?

Some insist that Bob is the living embodiment of an Oscar Wilde novel: a perilous portrait hangs in his attic auguring that the chickens will one day come horribly home to roost. Folks of a less literary, more scientific bent argue that Bob flourishes for the simple reason that his vital organs are pickled in alcohol. They point to prima facie evidence: he never drinks water (fish pee in it, after all) but lives on sherry by day, wine by early evening and Grand Marnier after dark. Still others, all of them disgustingly irreverent souls, cite the use-it-or-lose-it principle of human preservation and assert outrageously that Bob is no more inclined than he was at 14 to kowtow to the dictate of his Presbyterian forbears, namely that onanism leads to blindness and early death.

Whatever the secret behind his ongoing defiance of Father Time, there can be no doubt that Bob seems to have mastered the art. Nephew Dennis came with Nancy for their annual sojourn with Bob on MacKenzie Hill. We all took the bikes for 30-km rides to Cape Dauphin, Kempt Head, Southside Boularderie. While the rest stick strictly to the business of pedalling, steering and gear-grinding, Bob works his way through the entire songlist from South Pacific and Carousel.

He is ramrod straight, charms all the women, loves his root and leafy vegetables, sleeps like a child (‘That’s what you go to bed for’), enjoys perfect regularity, and appears as far from needing a cane or a walker as Justin Bieber. Don’t you just hate a bastard like that?!