‘Fifty birds to see before you die.’ I spotted this book at the weekend, and, as I flicked through, looking at the photographs, my first thought was why on earth the title needed to refer to death. Why not simply ‘50 interesting birds’, or ‘50 birds you really should see’.

I’m sick of reading about ‘things to do before you die’. The idea was first associated with fairly special, once-in-a-lifetime desires such as skydiving over the Grand Canyon, climbing K2 or swimming with dolphins, but now we’re cataloguing everything in terms of so-called bucket lists.

Whether it is places you must visit, food you have to eat, films you need to watch or books you have to read, it is referred to in terms of your mortality. I’ve read so many of these lists that, were we to fulfil them, we’d all have to live to be 300.

I’ll be lucky to make it to 70, if you believe everything you read in the papers.

Tasks carried out by a sample of 53-year-olds (that’s me), including standing on one leg and sitting up and down, could predict an early death, said a report in the weekend papers.

Longer-living women were found to manage 35 stand-ups-a-minute, whereas I could only manage 31, and that was from a pretty high chair. I managed the minute’s one-leg stand with my right, but not my left leg.

So if I’m to work my way through a bucket list, I’d better do it quickly.

Travel to New York, sail on a container ship... I’m already stressed by the idea of a deadline – an appropriate word if ever there was one.

I find the whole concept ridiculous. Surely the idea of a bucket list blights our everyday experiences. If I were to wing-walk across the English Channel, I wouldn’t want to do it as part of a pre-death plan, I’d want to do it as a live-life-to-the-full plan.

I hate the idea that an exciting, enjoyable experience should be part of a list that has to be ticked off as the years go by.

What’s the point? Why don’t we just get on and do these things, particularly as some of the most popular are so easily achievable?

The new ‘Great British Bucket List’ of 50 experiences includes items so mundane as watching a box set of Only Fools And Horses and eating fish and chips on a seaside pier.

And what happens if you get through your list a decade before you die? Do you draw up another? That’s one of the dilemmas I’ll include in ‘50 reasons not to draw up a bucket list’, due for publication if I get around to writing it before I meet my maker.