Next year, I will be 65. At 65, one leaves the plateau of middle age and enters the foothills of senescence. For some, it’s an uneventful milestone marked by tidying up some herbaceous borders or experimenting with pesto; others yield to mortal panic and max out their credit card on something wildly impractical.
On reaching this jubilee, an acquaintance of mine dyed his hair jet black. This is inadvisable because rather than restoring the appearance of youth and vigour, one emerges from the bathroom looking haunted, like a persecuted homosexual solicitor in a Dirk Bogarde film.
. There is no shortage of stories of those who suddenly foreswore all earthly pleasures only to slip on their Pilates mat
According to the World Health Organization, global life expectancy increased by six years between 2000 and 2019, and longevity is on a continuing upward curve. By 2050, it is estimated that a quarter of the world’s population will be aged over 60. That is an awful lot of elderly people. Conversely, in the West, the population of under-25s is dwindling. Once they came with negative connotations, senior citizens are now a vast and growing commercial market ripe for rebranding. Goodbye ‘old fogey’, hello ‘autumn adventurer’. Farewell to the old people’s home and Elephantiasis Enid coughing up a lung in the communal lounge, and hello to the bespoke senior living opportunity.
A complex of exclusive apartments for the retired went up near my home. The promotional brochure boasted that the ambient music in the lobby was ‘a three-movement symphony inspired by a trio of exceptional cuvées’. How could one resist?
If you are in fine fettle in your 60s and lived a less than healthily thus far, reconsider suddenly becoming a servant to virtue – it can be a tremendous shock to the system. There is no shortage of stories of those who suddenly foreswore all earthly pleasures only to slip on their Pilates mat and end up in a mobility scooter.
Television commercials whose target audience is retirees are filled with silver-haired sybarites. It’s never too late to skydive or carouse with new friends while your relatives impatiently await their inheritance.
Cruise ships – floating petri dishes with chandeliers – are the natural preserve of septuagenarians in culottes, captive to an all-day international buffet. Recently, I saw a holiday advertisement aimed at the ‘Young at Heart’. A cruise on the Mississippi, it featured a special guest appearance by Lulu. Although, putting Southern plantations and hanging moss together with a vintage Glaswegian singer struck me as a very niche combination.
Last year, I had to visit High Wycombe for an eye test. I was inconsolable. However, the derided market town has been compared to Paris. In his 1929 travel book, Labels, Evelyn Waugh wrote:
There was one sight, however, which was unforgettable – that of Paris lying in a pool of stagnant smoke, looking, except for the Eiffel Tower, very much like High Wycombe indefinitely extended.
The shopping centre in which the opticians is located cannot be compared to the Galeries Lafayette; it is resolutely Minsk with a Holland and Barrett. Because of the strength of my new prescription, the optician warned that the usual array of spectacle styles was not available to me. Laying out my options with the care of a funeral director displaying a choice of coffin linings, he smiled apologetically. ‘No, sorry, they’re far too 10 Rillington Place,’ I protested.
Later, my cataract operation was performed by a surgeon whose juvenescence rendered my youngest nephew a death-bed Edith Sitwell. He was absurdly young to be entrusted with someone’s eyesight, I thought. Then I realised that it was me – I’m getting old.
But it’s never been a better time in which to age. No longer obliged to express cosmetic affection for overindulged infants or strong-armed into attending a doomed wedding, I can, within reason, say and do whatever I like. It could be said of Baby Boomers that we are the first generation not to feel envious of the young. Obsessing over one’s carbon footprint or vacillating over which gender identity to pick doesn’t strike me as partying at the shindig of life. Even if it were possible to strap oneself into the cockpit of a time machine and revisit the age of 25, I think I would politely decline the offer.
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