Lighten Up: Ageless Mariah Carey - A new 'hero' of Irish farming
Mariah Carey is a superstar, and there is no point in me saying otherwise. File picture: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET
Mariah Carey is possibly the greatest singer in the world. She has had more hits in the charts than you or I have had round bales up in the yard.
When it comes to singing, she is up there with John McCormack. When it comes to popularity, even Richie Kavanagh himself, would struggle to outshine her.
Mariah is a superstar, and there is no point in me saying otherwise. And now, the superstar can add another notch to her belt, as she looks to reset the clock of life.
Mariah recently announced to the world that she has decided to stop ageing.
She never liked the idea of it in the first place, so like you or I might give up cigarettes for Lent and go on for the remainder of the year without a smoke, Mariah has resolved to rid herself of age. And while I'm no expert on ageing, I can see the benefits of it straight away.
Mariah no longer ages, and this will probably suit her far better than anything money can buy. Speaking in a recent interview about the whole ageing malarky, Mariah said: "I don't allow it. It just doesn't happen."
A defiant lady for sure. And fair play to her, I never liked the idea of ageing either, but I hadn't realised we had a choice in the matter.
The greatest problem in Irish farming today, bar finding a wife, is ageing. We are ageing faster in farming than in any other sector in Irish society. Just look at the statistics! They make for grim reading.
Right now, at the very moment, the average age of a farmer in County Cork is fast approaching 87, or thereabouts.
I have the charts in front of me. If we don't pull up our socks soon, we will have no socks left to pull up. We are in grave danger of reaching 100 years of age, if a stop isn't put to it.
I myself have aged quite a lot over the past few years. I reckon I've aged 10 years in the last decade alone.
And so today, I am advocating that we all follow Mariah Carey's lead and give up ageing for good. We need to stop. We need to stop the lights and halt the clock.
We too need to bite ageing on the backside, the way Mariah has. Irish farming would greatly benefit from the action.
Believe it or not, Mariah Carey right now is older than Auld Lehane! Mariah is closer to 60 than a breeding ram is to his raddle. And does she look 60?! Of course not. She looks no more than 47.
Clearly her scheme is working fantastically well.
The way I see it, if us farmers could stop this ageing fad too, sure we could go on milking cows, rearing cattle, feeding calves, lambing ewes, draining bogs, drawing bales, replacing slates, pulling ragwort and piking dung indefinitely.
We ourselves, and indeed the world around us, could only benefit from such action. And damn it all, if we can get a man onto the moon and develop a pour-on for lice in bullocks, we can achieve this feat too.
It's only a matter of putting our best foot forward and our ducks in a row, just like Mariah. So today I want to encourage you all to stop ageing and to wind back the clock about 20 years if possible.
And when you have achieved all this, please don't thank auld Lehane, for I was just following the lead set by Mariah Carey, the new 'hero' of Irish farming.
