Stop treating all us older ladies like we need protecting!
After Harry’s comments about the queen, ELISABETH LUARD (aged 80) says it’s typical of a patronising habit she abhors
THE first time it happened, I’d tripped on a concrete step and had to go to A&E to have a gash sewn up. It was my eldest son Caspar, then 50, who spoke on behalf of all three of my children.
‘You have to move house, Mother,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked about it between ourselves... sooner or later you’ll fall downstairs and get eaten by the cat.’
That’s when it struck me: my children, all in their middle years with teenagers of their own, had decided their mother was a problem that merited discussion behind her back. I’d reached an age — 75 — that meant I could no longer be trusted to make my own decisions. From now on, they knew better.
I recalled my bitter indignation when I read last week that Prince Harry had taken it upon himself to ‘protect’ his grandmother from the wrong sort of advisers. He said of his recent tea with Queen Elizabeth: ‘I’m just making sure she’s protected and got the right people around her.’
Well, thanks Harry — but just because the queen, aged 96 and in the year of her platinum jubilee, is sometimes obliged to use a walking stick, doesn’t mean she’s not in charge of who she is and what she does.
It seems to me (at 80 and still counting) there’s an assumption that the elderly can’t answer for themselves.
The queen, if recent reports are true, has all the marbles she needs to make up her own mind. She’s unlikely to relish a reminder of what happens to us all sooner or later, rich or poor, as we lose the ability to do the things we always did. I imagine the queen is far from amused, particularly given that young Harry is hardly the best person to offer advice on sensitive subjects.
I call this kind of patronising behaviour the ‘Does she take sugar?’ problem. By which I refer to the common scenario when a waiter in a cafe addresses an older person’s companion, rather than the older person themselves. The tacit assumption being that physical vulnerability necessarily translates into mental decline.
Some of us may not be as ablebodied as we were, but this doesn’t mean we don’t know if we take sugar in our tea.
In the same way, Harry seems to be assuming that now the queen is well into her 90s, she can no longer be trusted to choose her own people. He’s 37, for heaven’s sake — he should have learnt his lesson by now.
I have experience of old ladies with firm opinions. My mother was of the same generation as the monarch and did exactly as she wanted all her life. She never hid her disapproval of the choices I, her eldest daughter, had made. Wrong husband (unreliable), too many children (in too quick succession), career as a food writer (how did that happen?).
I never dared challenge my mother’s disapproval, so we never even agreed to disagree. My mother disliked confrontation face to face (though her letters filled me with dread) and made sure it didn’t happen. Perhaps this is why I became a writer — a way of claiming a voice.
So when my own children were young but well able to speak for themselves, I tried to make sure they too had a voice.
‘What’s his name?’ asked wellmeaning strangers, presuming my son couldn’t speak for himself. And I’d immediately readdress the question to him. ‘What’s your name?’ I would ask him.
It expressed exactly what I then felt and still do — that everyone, however young or old, should be allowed to speak for themselves.
Which made it doubly surprising when, shortly after my 75th birthday, my children — the very same ones I’d always encouraged to speak for themselves — attempted to remove that right from me.
They staged what they called ‘an intervention’. A polite word for ganging up on someone and telling them what to do.
That’s when they decided it would be better for me to move from my beloved rambling farmhouse in the wilds of the countryside to be closer to them: ‘We’ll find somewhere much safer and closer to us, somewhere the grandchildren can visit.’
Really? All five of my city-based grandchildren had been coming to stay for the holidays throughout their lives.
‘We know it’s expensive mending the roof and hard work pumping the water out of the cellar,’ my son continued, his two sisters nodding along. ‘And we won’t be able to help enough to make a difference.’
Of course it was well intentioned, coming from a place of loving care — but at the same time rather thoughtless. (In the same way Harry clearly can’t see the cringeworthy crassness of his bold — public, no less — declaration that he’s looking out for his dear old granny.)
I had no intention of leaving the beautiful place that had been my home for more than 20 years. Certainly not until I was good and ready.
My mother — let alone the queen — wouldn’t have stood for such treatment. And neither did I. My brain was still in full working order, thank you very much; I’d let them know when it wasn’t.
In the end it was three years before I decided, independently, that the time had come to move. I didn’t move to be closer to them, ‘safer’ though that might have
I share the monarch’s view: ‘I’m not done yet’
Everyone, however young or old, should be allowed to speak for themselves
Harry is hardly the best person to offer advice
been, but as close as I could get to the city where I was born.
These days, I live in a studio apartment in a factory conversion, which suits me fine.
And I share the monarch’s view of a suitable age for retirement: ‘Thanks for asking, but I’m not done yet.’
There will be times when I will need help. And in the postlockdown era I’m learning to accept help when it’s offered.
A seat on the bus, a helping hand to bridge the gap between platform and train, a kindly heave of a loaded shopping trolley.
The queen has already downsized — or so it seems — making Windsor Castle her main residence and choosing to stay at the modest Wood Farm during visits to the Sandringham estate — and she’s unlikely to need a seat on the bus. So what useful help might the monarch accept from the next generation?
Perhaps an offer of company when walking the corgis in the unmown end of the garden. If it were me, best of all would be an unconditional offer from California to send the little ones, Archie and Lilibet (suitably accompanied by Nanny, of course), for a few days with their great-granny without the pressure of parents or politics.
The queen is far older and wiser than her grandson. With age comes tolerance, if we care enough to take the good with the bad.
And Queen Elizabeth II has certainly had enough practice in forgiving — though possibly not forgetting — to move a loving relationship with her grandson back on track.
Family loyalty is, after all, her stock-in-trade.
It’ll be no surprise if the California runaways are seen waving from the palace balcony in June. Harry is her grandson and there’s often an unspoken alliance between older and younger — the problem generations that squeeze the middle.
I hope they do work it out. We can all of us change our friends (advisers too). But we can never change our family.
Well-meaning ‘advice’ and all.