The one thing that really gets better with age

On the London Underground last week the carriage was crowded. No seat. No problem. I’m only 67 and content to stand. But a younger man offered his seat, and, having some way to travel and a book to read, I accepted with the appropriate grunt and nod of gratitude. Later, approaching my station, I noticed he was still there. Should I thank him properly before alighting? But he was in another part of the carriage. It might look silly to elbow my way over. Let it pass.

Then a voice in my head spoke, a voice that over the decades has become so familiar. Don’t misunderstand me: this was not my conscience. My conscience was clear. It was definitely not necessary to thank this chap again. So the voice was not chiding but simply stating a fact: more like a weather forecast than an admonition. ‘I know you,’ it said. ‘I know what you’re like. If you fail to thank him, then after you’ve left the carriage, you will feel you really should have. You don’t feel that now, but you will, and it will discomfit you.’

Recognising the accuracy of this forecast, I did walk over and thank him. I still saw no need, but wished to save myself feeling bad about it later. As soon as I’d done this I felt content, just as the voice had predicted.

Many years ago, when middle-aged, I was in a little town called Urcos, near Cuzco in Peru. I was writing a book about Andean travels and had left my companions in Cuzco, whence we were all booked to fly into the Amazon to a riverport called Puerto Maldonado. But it was also (some said) possible to get there by road, and Urcos was where lorries began the rough road over the mountains and down into the rainforest.