I have somehow reached the age of 60 and I'm not sure how I feel about that. 60 is a milestone age and a proper one for once. 50 was fine, 50 was just a half-century, it didn't mean anything. 40 was merely a number to make the middle-aged feel uncomfortable, nothing tangible actually happened. 30 was an inconsequential blur that only a vain 29 year-old could ever be flustered by. But hit 60 and things are different, there are actual changes to the way you're treated. teens. 16 meant I could shag, 17 meant I could drive and 18 meant I could drink and vote. But after 18 any age-related benefits were generally minor, like being able to go to better nightclubs or get an HGV licence. 60 is suddenly a properly significant birthday again, which after 42 years of insignificance comes as a bit of a jolt. 60 is also when society starts to offer you rewards in recognition of your age. Suddenly you're a 'Senior' and all sorts of nice little concessions kick in like cheaper haircuts, cut price cinema tickets, £4 off admission at Coventry Transport Museum or 10% off shopping at Iceland on a Tuesday. Not everywhere is so generous, so for example Kew Gardens and the Tower of London make you wait until you're 65 and the London Eye charges everyone over 16 the same. But before today I would never even have bothered to look at the Concessions tab and now suddenly it might be well worth it. (ooh, National Trust Senior Membership is 25% off the normal subscription and I am now eligible, that's how useful checking rewards for today's post has been) Bow Geezers, and they appear to be having a cheerily excellent time every time they meet up but I could have joined that at 55 and I didn't. 60 is just a number with a zero on the end, a number we choose to see as special. I was going to say that it's only special because we count in 10s but in fact it'd have a zero on the end if we counted in 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, or 12s instead, indeed of all the years in the human lifespan it's the year with the greatest number of factors so maybe that means it really is fundamentally special after all. 60 is when older people start to welcome you to their world. "See," they say, "it's not so bad. 60 was nothing, it's 70 you need to worry about... or 75/80 depending. 60 is merely piddly foothills, we need not speak of it, but by the way welcome to the club." 60 was once the start of the countdown towards death. When I was born in 1965 the average life expectancy for men was about 68, indeed neither of my grandfathers got past 70. It's very different today, thankfully, with the ONS website confirming that the average 60 year-old male has a life expectancy of 84 with a 1 in 4 chance of reaching 92. The Grim Reaper's still coming, indeed could cut you down anytime, but he's a lot further away than previous generations expected. kicked back, in terms of state pension to 67 and stretching further later, so no longer the employment guillotine it used to be nor the dawn of pipe and slippers leisure. niggles at present but with the potential to one day properly scupper things, though I fervently hope I'll be able to get to 70 and say they still haven't. I used my Senior Railcard for the first time yesterday to take me to the Essex village where my grandmother met my grandfather. She was the cleaner in the pub and he was the dishy postman on his daily rounds, and she'd lean out of the window for a chat and that's how it all started. It's a restaurant now and sadly wasn't open so I couldn't go in, but I did pause for a while and ponder the significance of the windows that led to my Mum being born and me being here today. In particular it made me realise that the elderly couple I'd only known in their 60s were once young and playful and hopeful and happy, and you should never judge people on how old they are now but on a lifetime of achievement. 60 is strange because for everyone else it's just a normal Sunday whereas as for me and the other 2350 Britons born on 9th March 1965 it's a potential existential crisis. 60 is an unwelcome eyeopener. 60 is well special. 60 is nothing. 60 is what you make of it.

A few days ago, I wrote about causal and effectual reasoning. You’ll be familiar with these two paths—but having words to describe them really helps.  “When you think with causal reasoning, you focus on what you want to do—the desired end goal, or the destination—and then work backwards from that,” I wrote. “Business leaders, managers, […] The post Limitations of causal reasoning appeared first on Herbert Lui.

The Mousetrap is the play that refuses to die. It's also an iconic part of London's cultural life, if not for critical acclaim then for sheer persistence, having reliably entertained West End audiences for over 70 years. So when London Theatre Week recently offered cut-price tickets I thought it was about time I booked a seat at St Martin's Theatre and experienced all the spoilers for myself. The Mousetrap started out as a 30 minute radio play on the BBC Light Programme on the evening of 30th May 1947. It was specially written by Agatha Christie for Her Majesty Queen Mary on the occasion of her 80th birthday, and was originally titled Three Blind Mice. If you'd been listening to Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh on the Home Service instead you'd have missed it. Later that year it was adapted as a 30 minute play for BBC Television, then in 1948 reworked as a short story for American readers of Cosmopolitan magazine. Christie subsequently decided it might make a good full-length play so set about writing the stage version which made its debut at the Theatre Royal Nottingham on 6th October 1952. It's been running ever since. Mathew Pritchard on the occasion of his ninth birthday. She thought it might run for 14 months tops whereas in fact it's proven to be one of the best birthday presents ever, and Mathew still runs a charitable trust promoting the arts in Wales on the proceeds. She also stipulated that no film version could be produced until the show had been closed for six months, which of course it still hasn't, so if you want to discover the plot your only options are to read all the spoilers on Wikipedia or turn up in person. St Martin's Theatre in Covent Garden, just across the street from The Ivy restaurant. The Mousetrap first arrived at the Ambassador's Theatre on 25th November 1952 after a brief provincial tour taking in Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds and Birmingham. It played there until March 1974 when over the space of a weekend it transferred nextdoor to St Martin's Theatre where it's been playing ever since. Technically the pandemic forced a pause in March 2020 but The Mousetrap was the first West End show to reopen the following spring and officially its opening run continues. Not only is this a record-breaking debut it's also by far the longest run of any play anywhere in the world, and even in its 73rd year The Mousetrap is still raking them in. The Mousetrap is a one-set play, that set being the hall at Monkswell Manor, an isolated country guest house in the wilds of Berkshire. The first couple we meet are Mollie and Giles, the newlywed proprietors hoping to make a go of the place and nervous of who their first guests might be. It's also snowing outside which means the scene is set for a classic lock-in murder mystery, and which also keeps the stage hands busy dropping flakes past the hall's lattice windows. As various characters turn up, not all of them anticipated, Christie skilfully weaves a complex tale out of seemingly not very much. Some characters seem pure cliche while others are more compellingly complex and may not be all they appear on the surface. The script is also well sprinkled with comedic moments, indeed it's quite some achievement for a play steeped in 1950s sensibilities to still be making audiences laugh in the 2020s. eight actors are required and none of them are big names, each cast signing up for a six month stint on the understanding that the play's the star. The current lot includes one who's done The Play That Goes Wrong, one that's done Hollyoaks, four who were in Doctors and one who was a Slytherin bully in the first Harry Potter. The latter is Alasdair Buchan who as an 11 year-old put on an amateur version of The Mousetrap at school only for his headmaster to receive a cease and desist letter from the show's West End producers. Thankfully this didn't count against him when he joined the cast three decades later, and his depiction of Mr Paravicini (the mysterious foreign stranger) was one of the play's comic highlights. ice cream tubs. The current going rate is £4 for the 125ml Mini Tubs or £5 for the 180ml Upsell Tubs, and I was surprised the lemon sorbet didn't sell better. She also had £6 programmes to sell, these smallish but also fairly thick because a 73 year-old play has quite a backstory to be elaborated. In a nice touch if you take your programme to the bar they'll officially stamp it with the performance number and then you've got a proper souvenir on your hands. Sitting beside the exit had one final benefit in that I was out on the street before the rest of the theatre disgorged so was able to get a clear view of the wooden board in the foyer. And wow the count was now at 29983 performances, a phenomenal total, and incredibly close to a proper quadruple-zeroed milestone. The Mousetrap's 10,000th performance was way back on Friday 17th December 1976, a few months after Agatha Christie's death, and the 20,000th was on Saturday 16th December 2000. By my calculations the 30,000th will thus be the matinee on Saturday 22nd March 2025, i.e. a fortnight from today, so steel yourself for a burst of publicity celebrating the amazing success of the world's longest running play. Did you ever see such a sight in your life? See how they run. See how they run.

What makes a person entrepreneurial? Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy believes the distinguishing factor is in the reasoning process. She identifies two types of reasoning: When you think with causal reasoning, you focus on what you want to do—the desired end goal, or the destination—and then work backwards from that. Business leaders, managers, and strategists tend […] The post Causal and effectual reasoning appeared first on Herbert Lui.