A LADY AT LEISURE
Fiona Armstrong decides this Lady’s not for retiring
Another year – and my generation is reaching that age. All around friends are totting up pension pots and hanging up well-worn work boots. As the tyranny of the alarm clock begins to wear thin, they are turning their attention to golf clubs and garden centres. They are booking Florida cruises and plan to sail off into the sunset, glass of merlot in hand. And that could be me. Six weeks ago I also joined the ranks of the might-be retired. I am now officially ‘senior’ and I don’t mind a bit – everyone knows sixty is the new forty. And sixty brings subsidies. Having threescore years behind a girl allows you to really speak your mind. You can tell errant youths off on trains. You can order litter louts to pick up their droppings. It gives a devil-may-care feel to the day. It also means a free bus pass and cheap travel in previously unaffordable first-class train carriages. But not everyone is ready to cope with the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Not all wish to embrace what could just be the slippery slope to a final winter of discontent… After turning sixty my mother started wearing shorter skirts and spent the next fifteen years refusing to countenance any of the ‘elderly’ concessions on offer.
‘ Not everyone is ready to cope with the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’
Just think of the money she could have saved! But she elected to stay ageless and timeless. And now, still at an unmoving fifty-nine, she is technically younger than I am.
Speak it softly, but there is something about being sixty that sends some folk into a right old spin. One of my best friends won’t even discuss the passing decades – even though she knows, and I know, exactly how old she is.
I, meanwhile, have been shouting my own milestone from the rooftops. Mind, I was buoyed by the man on the train who recognised me from the telly and said I didn’t look a day older. Older than what, the chief wondered? Thirty years ago, or just last week?
The day itself was taken up reading text messages from people who’d seen the anniversary on newspaper birthday lists. ‘I can’t believe you’re that ancient!’ was the gist of the messages pinging in.
It could have been an excuse for a party, or, at the very least, a slap-up lunch. I might have gone shopping for shoes, or walked the MacNaughties on the beach. Instead I put nose to the grindstone and set off to work. And how apt it was.
I was tasked with chairing a media conference in London on ‘Ageism in the Workplace’. Diversity may be a luvvie watchword, but whilst employment of creed, colour and sex is closely monitored, the older man or woman is now the elephant in the room. The average age in advertising, for example, is a baby-faced thirty-four.
Yet elephants are wise and the fact that a few over sixties are still working in the TV industry may be testament to that. On the other hand, it might just be a miracle – or just an oversight.
So you can keep your gorgeous gardens and your glorious golf. Retirement may be a tempting thought for some. But a) I can’t afford to, and b) I don’t want to. In fact, there’s only one thing worse than stopping work – and that’s if the chief decides to give it all up and stay at home…