Simon Hoggart's week: 60 things not to do before you die

Avoid Glastonbury, a Star Trek convention, any film with a II, III or IV in the title and the London Marathon
Glastonbury. Middle-class people wading through mud, looking at Bono. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

✒I was touched by the story about the woman who, on turning 60, decided to do 60 things she had never done before. Some were simple, such as tackling a sudoku, others more tricky, like getting on to Eggheads. But it struck me that what would be really helpful would be a guide to 60 things not to do before you die. I can think of plenty.

Go to Glastonbury. Why? Middle-class people wading through mud, looking at Bono, of all people, performing 200 yards away. And stinking loos. No thanks. Or a Star Trek convention. Please!

Buy a ticket for any film with a II, III or IV in the title, with the exceptions of Godfather II, or The Madness of George IV.

Queue overnight to get into Wimbledon and see half of the court where two unknowns are competing to be knocked out in the following round. Join the Last Night funsters standing near the front at the Proms. Toe-curlingly awful.

Run the London Marathon in a wacky costume. Give the money direct to charity instead. See any play or musical based on an old film. Go to a timeshare demonstration in a hotel by a midge-infested Scottish loch. Wear jeans when you are already fat, and old.

I could go on, and probably will.

✒Johann Hari, the Independent columnist who interviewed famous people and inserted bits of their published work as if they had said it to him, seems a little puzzled by the fuss. He was writing, he says, an "intellectual portrait," so it was all right really. I only wish he had been around to interview, say, Winston Churchill.

"The prime minister greets me warmly, and asks if I would like some refreshment. Cue much fruitless rummaging in cupboards, followed by an apology, 'My dear fellow, I'm frightfully sorry – I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat'.

"I ask his views on the banking crisis. He pauses a moment, leans forward and tells me confidentially: 'Never in the course of human history has so much been owed by so many to so few'…"

(I learn from Twitter that I am not the first to have wanted to read this interview.)

✒We had an idyllic trip to Stanley Hall in Essex for their latest opera. If you've ever read Alain Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes you'll be familiar with the notion of a wonderful party, glimpsed through the trees, never to be rediscovered.

To get there you go down smaller and smaller country roads, then a mile down a dirt track, and finally find yourself outside this superb Tudor house. A barn has been converted to an auditorium, in which the back is open to the lovely rolling countryside of north Essex. There's a tent for people to take their picnics, and lovely gardens where you can stroll. The opera is only on for a few days, then, like Brigadoon, it vanishes.

This year they had chosen Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, which is an entertaining opera, full of good tunes. The only problem was that it was the hottest day of the year so far – 29C – and one of the crucial scenes takes place in a forest in the middle of a Russian winter, so the poor singers had to perform in long woollen coats and fur hats.

The director, Natascha Metherell, was unfazed. Last summer she helped direct La Bohème in Cincinnati, where the temperature outside was 47C and the air conditioning couldn't keep up. The famous aria should have been renamed Your Tiny Hand Is Molten.

Christopher Stewart-Smith, whose idea this all is, said that they'd even had a Russian TV crew to film. "We are used to seeing Onegin at the Bolshoi," they said, "not on a farm in Essex!"

✒My friend Robert Rogers (even after years I have to remind myself he is not called Roger Roberts) has just been appointed clerk of the House of Commons. It's a very distinguished job. One imagines a whiskery Dickensian grandee, and that's what he looks like, except that he is also one of the funniest and nicest people I know. And he's written a terrific book of parliamentary trivia. I would add that he is also very indiscreet, but that might make life difficult for him, so I won't.

✒Daft labels: last week I mentioned the clothes recycling bin marked "Do not enter." Perhaps it wasn't so silly. Joy Kell was at the recycling centre in Penzance, when she saw an elderly woman "obviously very shaken, being offered a seat and a cup of tea. She had been putting her old newspapers in a bin, when with a loud clang the lid of a nearby clothing skip opened, and an unkempt and wild-eyed gentleman emerged."

Michael Rank bought two "prime plaice fillets in a bespoke Waitrose crumb". As opposed to a ready-to-wear Lidl crumb, I suppose. Brian Pollitt saw a bottle of distilled witch hazel in Boots, Glasgow. It warned: "Do not use if you are allergic to distilled witch hazel."

Sally Shalloe found this on a packet of Collier's Welsh cheddar: "Keep Collier's wrapped when not in use and do use Collier's on different eating occasions." Is that a polite way of saying, "don't eat it all at once"?

William Philpotts has a Newcastle United shirt labelled "Wash this when dirty". Surely not an offensive reflection on the normal habits of Geordies? Haydn Wood's friend brought back from Disneyland a pack of Mickey Mouse cheese puff crackers, each about the size of a thumbnail. It warns: "This product should only be fed to seated, supervised children who are accustomed to eating solid food." Paranoid lawyers at work there, to be sure.

And more in hope than expectation: Ron Jacob sent a label from Mary Berry's family recipe All Seasons Sauce, which is designed to go with "roast joints, spare ribs, barbecues and sausages, beefburgers, kebabs, steaks, chargrilled meat, chicken drumsticks. Approved by the Vegetarian Society."

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