Profitable Wonders James Le Fanu
In January, I googled ‘synonym for gerontophile’.
I was writing about the death of Butch Stewart, the Jamaican founder of the Sandals chain of Caribbean resorts, at the age of 79. He was a much-loved older friend. And I wondered whether there was a name for gerontophiles like me.
We don’t so much ‘target’ or ‘groom’ people from older age groups. But we find that, once a relationship with an older friend has been established, the friendship is particularly rewarding. What, I wondered, is a cohort of fellow oldie-loving enthusiasts called?
Warning: don’t google ‘synonym for gerontophile’. The computer misunderstood and now I’m being bombarded with graphic images. I haven’t looked too hard at the bombardments – I’ve glimpsed naked crepiness and one link was tagged ‘find local older sex contacts’. That wasn’t what I wanted at all.
Perhaps I should call myself a maturity enthusiast as I pay homage to my 20-year friendship with Butch. As a grown-up playmate, he had multiple advantages – lovely houses and boats which he took delight in sharing. But it was his very oldness that appealed to me most.
As with vintages of wine, there are also vintages of people and it’s an uncomfortable truth that some vintages are superior to others. Those friends who grew up when there was only organic food to eat and few screens to distract the brain and stunt the imagination are, I’m afraid, simply better value.
Twenty years ago, writer Paul Johnson observed, ‘We are becoming less intelligent, and the machines help us kid ourselves.’ Because we can now look everything up, we aren’t using large parts of our brain, specifically our memory.
As Paul said, ‘Huge stores of knowledge in the brain, on instant tap, make possible the creative connections which are one symptom of high intellectual performance.’
The later you came to screen life, the better your conversational abilities. Conversation with oldies is more rewarding. You know they’re listening when you talk, not scrolling through their iphone. They understand subtlety and nuance – they don’t need to add a smiling emoji to a text or write ‘haha!’. And the word ‘speakeasy’ should be repurposed to denote premises where you can go ungagged by the modern thought police.
Romance is another matter. I haven’t had an older boyfriend myself but I once wrote a double-pager in the Telegraph about five beautiful girls in their twenties. They were all going out with grumpy old men in their sixties and seventies. The men weren’t rich – what was the incentive?
The girls were unanimous. These older men had done things in life, overcome obstacles, and been cold, hungry and fearful. They had hinterlands and exquisite manners. In their company the girls felt feminine and Audrey Hepburn-like. Boys their own age saw them as competitors, rather than fragile flowers to be idolised and protected.
A new Mills & Boon book has been ‘written’ by Sarah, Duchess of York. Mills & Boon publish, worldwide, 1,500 new titles a month, featuring manly, physically strong, gruff-voiced, older male leads and delicate, shrinkingviolet female leads. There’s clearly still a taste for this sort of thing.
I’ve had many vintage friends in my life, most of them now dead. It will be hard for me to recruit any more – the numbers of people older than me are diminishing. How I’ll miss my oldie friends.
‘You know oldies are listening when you talk, not scrolling through their iphone’