Hhow old is old It depends on how old you are because as you get older you will push that number upwards. A recent German study asked people over 40 the same question eight times over a 25-year period, and it found “old” gets older as we age. Of course it does. Should Paul McCartney, fit at 81¾, choose 64 now as the time he will need nourishment? Jump Jack Flash at 80 is as lithe and fresh as ever, but only halfway Dorian Grayyoung of limb, but a face as disheveled as that portrait: is Mick Jagger old yet?
I’m 77: My friends and I ponder our age all the time. How old are we, exactly? I can feel like Methuselah and mention to some bright young spark that the first election I covered as an Observer reporter was 1970, or that I remember the old king’s funeral, or that I have a pop ration book had (sweet rationing lasted until 1953), or how the great smog of London of 1952 which killed 4,000 knocked me down with bronchitis, by inhaling Friars’ Balm under a towel. It’s old, isn’t it?
But I’m happy to reject other people’s judgments about age, certainly if it comes from social media trolls. Last week one man posted “God, are you still there? I thought you had been in a house for years.” Another, “Oh, is Polly still alive, then?” and a third wrote: “Retire already.” Enemies’ abuse changes from stupid woman to stupid old woman. Even friends, like the esteemed Roy Lilleylast week blogged a compliment (I think) and read: “She might look like a kind grandmother who would let you fold up your pajamas and sit up at the tea table. But… if she was a sports star, she would be a cage fighter.”
When I was 18, I had a (bad) novel published in which the old and dull were in their 20s. Now, I think “old” only applies to the seriously ill in mind or body. If you’re awake and alert, you don’t count as old, do you? But definitely not that young. The young people are different, in a different time zone, unhindered by experience that stifles enthusiasm with, “Oh, we tried that before and it didn’t work.”
At our age you think a lot about death, calculate how many years, how many Christmases are left and wonder if your youngest grandchild will remember you. When you consider closets full of clothes, you think: perfectly serviceable enough to see you through, you don’t need more, do you? And there’s no use wishing you’d grown old as beautiful as Helen Mirren – you never were. My generation of wannabe actors at the National Youth Theater never forget the day she blew away their foolish delusions when she walked on stage.
I can boldly say that I am not afraid of dying, after two bouts with breast cancer: I am only afraid of dementia or going out through a torture chamber. But I have no idea if this is true. Until you hear the knock at the door, you can’t know if philosophical wisdom holds up. I am surprised by the death of others, the stoics and the fearful stalwarts.
You just want to keep going. Blessed with a large beloved family, four children and seven grandchildren, I stop more often to think about my luck. At my age, you shed terrifying youthful anxieties about how things would turn out. I’m screwed, and that’s as good as it gets. I will not improve with age, nor become wiser or more beautiful. I have no bucket list. Last year I even wrote my memoirs.
If something newsworthy hits you in the street, you’ll be called “granny” or “pensioner”, a meaningless identifier when pensioners even more socially divided than the rest. Pensioner politics is confusingly contradictory: fewer of the old are poor than the general population, but it’s still 2 million people. The low-paid risk becoming too sick to work, falling into the benefits abyss between work and a rising pension age. Yet the old are also the richest, my generation reaping an undeserved bounty from house price inflation, preventing the young from buying. But 1.6 million pensioners has an unmet care need and many die waiting, with no government daring to siphon property wealth from the old to fund universal social care. Pensioners are powerful voters who install one Tory government after another. The young must wish us all dead, although opinion polls show them incredibly magnanimous.
Geroscience can keep us alive but clog the NHS beds with multiple miserable diseases. Can it keep us healthy longer and then kill us quickly? Monday’s landmark debate in parliament reflected the two-thirds who want it right to die. Last year Sima the lab rat the longest living rat in history. What was her sinister elixir? The blood of the young, which revived her organs. By living too long, will we vampire the young? I don’t know how old is too old, but I intend to recognize it when I get there.
