Great-great-great problems for a busy 300-year-old

'Last month, at a conference in Cambridge, biologist Aubrey de Grey told leading gerontologists there is no reason why humans cannot live for 1000 years. He named seven cellular, molecular and genetic calamities that add up to a worn-out body - then offered a cure.'
 – The Age, October 9

IT has been a busy morning. I've just got home from Kmart, where I was shopping for a seventh birthday present for my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, Zac. I really shouldn't have taken so long over it. You see, with more than 70,000 living descendants, I cannot afford to fuss too much over any of their birthdays, which occur at a rate of nearly 200 on every day of the year. But Zac is so cute, and it's kind of ... fun, strolling along the shelves of toys looking for something for the littlies.

Much more fun than looking for gifts for my own kids. Even my "baby", Catherine, is 262 now, and that really makes things hard. What do you give someone who has read all the main works of all the main authors in all known languages? What DVD or CD do you give someone who has seen every movie, heard every album? What trinket can impress somebody who has visited every country and region of the world at least three times?

I think I last gave you an update on my busy life two years ago, on the occasion of my 300th birthday. At that stage, the human lifespan was understood to be an all-too-brief 500 years or so. But now that new advances in gerontology have stretched our fleeting time on this earth to a full millennium, I feel all sorts of new possibilities - and difficulties - opening before me.

After a career in journalism, you may recall, I entered politics, and after a mere 80 years - I was always considered a tearaway - became prime minister of Australia. It turned out to be an excellent prelude to my real career as the CEO of, successively, five multinational corporations.

But after that, with middle-age approaching in my early 200s, I started to slow down. After serving for three decades as secretary-general of the UN, and solving the problems of hunger and poverty, I took a medical degree at the University of Newcastle and settled into a comfortable semi-retirement as a GP in Byron Bay, where I have been for a quarter of a century.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: why didn't I achieve as much as my contemporaries? Oh, I guess I simply preferred the quiet life. Now I must accept the fact that, with a further 700 years stretching out before me, I have reverted to a mere stripling.

When I have finished translating all the main poets of all the main European languages into all the other main European languages - a labour that is unlikely to occupy more than a couple of centuries - how on earth will I keep myself alert and interested?

Mind you, this is less of a challenge than future generations will confront. If birthdays are hard for me now, imagine what little Zac will face at my age when, in addition to his 70,000 descendants, he has to inquire regularly after the welfare of his two million or so great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents?

It will be a busy schedule indeed, and the stamps on the birthday cards alone will cost more than $20,000 each week, at present postal prices. Thankfully, that should not bother Zac in 300 years. I was careful to put $1 into a savings account for the little lad when he was born, at a fixed annual interestrate of 10 per cent. It's only worth $1.95 now, but will yield him a very handy $2.6 trillion (about four times Australia's present GDP) by the time he is my age.

My own big problem, I confess, is Christmas lunch, a challenge that will only grow more daunting. Last year, it was still possible to hire the MCG and feed my offspring and their offspring and their ... well, you get the picture.

But this will become far harder as I approach my millennium. Indeed, even when I am a spry 500 there will be about 51 million descendants to accommodate, more than double the entire population of Australia today.

The turkey alone is going to set me back close to a quarter of a billion dollars. Oh well. At least such a big group will make it easier to keep my in-laws apart. They haven't really got on since the Industrial Revolution.