I can’t be alone in feeling slightly harangued by the recent profusion of lists of things we must do before we die. Not “could do” or “might enjoy doing”, but absolutely must do: the arbitrary lists of places we are obliged to see, foods we have to eat, sea creatures we must swim with.

The average Irish person has an expected lifespan of 81 years; that’s a meagre 710,030 hours and 36 minutes. Is it really imperative to spend a chunk of this time feeling guilty for not reading Ulysses?

So here is a subjective and completely unscientific list of the 20 things you really don’t need to do before you die. (Feel free to completely disregard it, and not do your own 20 things instead.)



1 Eat anything described as a “superfood”. Consider it the “law of wheatgrass” – the inverse relationship between the palatability of a food, and the enthusiasm with which it is marketed as a superfood.

2 Worry about getting a bikini body. If you have a body and a pair of swimming togs, you are what women’s magazines like to call “beach-ready”.

3 Become a naturist. Naturists are like body-confidence jihadis.

4 See the Mona Lisa. Or any other famous work of art that requires standing in a long queue on holidays when you could be sitting by a pool drinking wine.

5 Go to Disneyland. I recently brought my children on a day trip. Afterwards, they proclaimed that the best bits were the train ride there and the gift shop.

6 Buy a house.

7 Run a marathon. It can be a life-enhancing experience – once you can manage the stairs again, your nipples have stopped bleeding and your toenails have grown back.

8 Give birth without pain relief. Labour without pain relief is overrated. Having children is not obligatory either – but that might not be a decision best made with the help of a list in a newspaper.

9 Troll people on the internet.

10 Swim with sharks. There are two ways to do this. One is in a shark tank on dry land, while tourists snigger at you as you cavort with creatures roughly as dangerous as underwater bunnies. The other way is with great whites in the ocean. Both are equally idiotic.

11 Kiss the Blarney stone. Visit the castle for the views, by all means. But queuing up to perform the acrobatics required to share the bacteria of hundreds of sweaty tourists will not make you any more Irish. And all the photographs will show is an unflattering angle on your stomach.

12 Follow a fast diet.

13 Talk about your food intolerances. Unless you’re Woody Allen.

14 Get a tan. If you’re of Celtic origin, you’ll be aiming for somewhere between honey and walnut, but you’ll end up rose to fuchsia – along with the chance to grow your own melanoma.

15 Cuddle a koala. They smell, they claw, and being handled stresses them out.

16 Read Ulysses. Or worry about what it says about you that you haven’t read it.

17 Play golf. Talk about playing golf.

18 Watch cat videos on the internet.

19 Forget to call your parents.