AT THE time of warbling, I'm not clear that I'd like to live till I'm 100.

That's almost twice what I've had already, and that's been rubbish.

Still, I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm 97. As The Herald reported, new figures show a growing number of Scots are living for more than 100 years.

In recent years we've even had to contend with people talking about the scientific possibility of immortality. Bound to happen the very moment I croak.

But you do start to wonder: shouldn't life mean life? It links to the oft-advanced proposition that this life is a dream.

Many leading scientists and philosophers have investigated this, though I take as my leading authority the movie The Matrix.

Fair enough, I never understood that either, and I doubt if we're being kept alive in an illusion, while our real selves are used as fodder for aliens. Call me controversial, but I find that a little far-fetched.

All the same, you've got to admit: there's something not quite right about life. And now we're trying to extend it. It fascinates me that, until recently, you were hardly born before it was time to up and dee.

That is why the 21st birthday party is a fairly recent phenomenon. Oddly enough, through the ages, it has been the kings and aristocrats quaffing vats of wine and scoffing sides of red meat who lived longest, while the poor on their spartan diet of wholemeal oats and plain bread shuffled off right early. Now we're told to eat like the latter. What are they trying to do? Kill us?

But back in the day, so to say, folk died young. That seems to me both tragic and strange. People were more cruel in the past, but they were not that different otherwise.

There were people in Roman times and even further back who were far more intelligent than people alive today, and I don't just mean the kind of Neanderthals who gathered in Glasgow's George Square on September 19.

In the meantime, while I find life abysmal and disappointing, I am going to try and live as long as I can. The main purpose will be just to annoy myself and give myself something to moan about.

As long as there are boxed DVD sets to watch and chocolate hasn't been outlawed, I'm sure I'll be reasonably content.