AND FINALLY

Over-50s CAN learn new tricks

IN AN interview with People Magazine, the actor Idris Elba suggested you can’t have new experiences after 50. Can it be true that the ‘sexiest man alive’ believes such nonsense?

I haven’t stopped having new experiences and learning from them since my 50th birthday in 1996. Here’s a whistle-stop tour. In my 50s, I learned how to roll with serious disappointment on various work fronts; how to cope with the sudden, heartbreaking end of a long marriage and grow stronger; how to steer my adult children through the same ending; how to become independent earning money; how to accept the limitations of many friendships; how to celebrate a second marriage — and give thanks; how to grasp with both hands a never-thought-of chance, and run with it, rejoicing in a new role in journalism I hadn’t dreamed of (which leads neatly to this very column!).

What else? In my 60s, I started going to a gym. I looked back with astonishment at my old Leftist notions and wondered that I could have been so naive.

I’ve embraced Christianity while retaining my agnosticism; because ideas are gloriously complicated. I’ve become a grandmother and learned a new kind of love as well as finding levels of patience inside myself I didn’t know were there.

A deep, rich love of the countryside still moves this cityborn woman — accompanying profound, perfect contentment in the life I share with my husband and our dogs (remembering that until 2002 I didn’t even like the creatures).

I’ve surveyed my wrinkles, sighed, regretted — then accepted. Resisted buying clothes, instead mending old ones. Realised imposing order on a cupboard can be sublime.

More negatively, I have learned to become more cynical — terminally disillusioned with politics and the elite class of politicians, commentators and writers I once socialised with.

Thanks for the emotional exercise, Idris! It’s good for all of us to look back, assess — and give thanks.