Why do nurses quit? Because they care | 3 July 2017

Sometimes, on Sundays, I visit Richard, a friend who’s 95 and lives alone. The idea originally was that I’d be doing Richard a favour, but the truth is he cheers me up far more than I do him.

I visit because I like him, but as the weeks go by, I’m afraid I’ve also developed a grim curiosity about what it’s like to be in your nineties. Meals-on-wheels, crumbling knees, hernias, cannulas, the way a day dissolves into unintended naps… ‘Can’t we talk about something more cheerful?’ says Richard, as we sit knee to knee. But I’m obsessed, like a tourist taking notes on some awful country they must one day go to.

The notion I struggle most with is that Richard, though partially sighted and mostly immobile, is one of the very luckiest of old people. He’s made it to nearly 100 in decent nick: not blown up, run over or demented.