Hunter Davies
About 30 years ago, when I was in my fifties, I was getting changed at the open-air men’s pool on Hampstead Heath when I recognised the very old man beside me, drying himself.
He was William Cooper (1910-2002), award-winning author of Scenes from Provincial Life.
We got chatting and he happened to mention that he had just turned 80. I was astounded. Still swimming, still out and about at 80 … incredible. I remember thinking, ‘God, I hope I’ll still be able to walk when I get to 80 – never mind swim.’
I invited him home for a cup of tea, whispering to my wife as I led him into our kitchen, ‘Say nowt, pet. He’s 80. Yeah, really. I can’t believe it, either.’
I am now 83, and go swimming three times a week, to the men’s pond in summer and to Kentish Town pool in winter; not the pond then – I’m not that daft.
But the nature of old age has changed since I bumped into William Cooper on Hampstead Heath. A recent survey by the Office for National Statistics said the definition of when old age begins must be changed because health improvements mean 70 is the new 65. Today, a 65-yearold can expect to live for another 20 years – meaning we need to change the age we become ‘old’. A 70-year-old today apparently has the same characteristics and health as a 65-year-old in 1997.
Surveys are always telling us what we know: we are all living longer; age is just a number; the elderly are having more sex than the young; we are happier than the middle-aged, poor sods – all that stress and sleepless nights. One feels so sorry for them.
But the survey is right that the old definition of old age is totally out of date. Once it was 65, when you got pensioned off and put on the shelf. Now we are just starting a new career, going up Everest, playing another round of golf and about to go on our third cruise of the year, because, after all, we have money. And homes. Unlike so many young uns.
There is a theory that, with so many of us oldies around today, we will clutter up the hospitals and hammer the pension funds; be a burden on the young. In truth, however, so many of us are so active for so much longer, with many of us still working and paying taxes, that we are still contributing.
We are also spending so much on enjoying ourselves – and helping our children get on the housing ladder – that, economically, we are helping to keep the country going.
I know I look 83; the mirror tells me – but am I bothered? Am I, heckers! I know I can’t run up Skiddaw any more but I did it – and can remember it. I know I had a triple heart bypass a year ago but I survived. And now I like to think that, with all these sodding little pills, I won’t have another one.
I don’t honestly think about myself as old in the way my parents’ generation did, giving up the ghost at 65, dressing, acting and referring to themselves as old people, retiring from active life.
I have been young. The young have never been old. So I see myself as a winner.