It all begins promisingly: a
retirement party, perhaps; a good deal of jolly banter and joshing from family
and friends and a moment of joy when the reality of ‘no more Monday
mornings’ kicks in. Welcome to your third age.
There will be some adjustments to
make, of course. You may get that aimless feeling once in a while as ennui sidles
up to you but, with a bit of determination to adapt, you soon become reconciled
to the loss of your old routine and start to build a new one – for routines are
an important adjunct to physical and mental well-being. And, assuming you have sufficient
levels of health and liquidity, you will become the possessor of that ultimate
luxury – time. Time to do as you please rather than as you are obliged.
So, no feeling sorry for yourself. Count
the benefits: free travel on public transport (though it would have been more
use to you earlier in life); free prescriptions (valuable, considering the probability
of ailments escalating); reduced entry fees to all kinds of entertainment
(though I don’t know if this applies to Glasto and the like); and the freedom
to take advantage of all kinds of services more cheaply, outside peak hours.
With all these gifts, life really is a bowl of cherries. Though it is not
without certain drawbacks.
They say that you are only as old as
you feel, but this is not the perception of people younger than you. Teenagers cannot
conceive of reaching the age of thirty, so anyone with grey hair is ancient and
may as well live in another world, never mind a third age. Don’t be surprised
when the young person selling you a ‘senior’ ticket for the cinema looks
blankly at you when you make some jovial comment. They may just harbour a tiny
bit of resentment at the fact that you can spend all of Wednesday at the
cinema, while they are paid minimum wages in exchange for the bloom of their
youth, visibly wilting in a dead-end job. Something similar may have been in
the consciousness of the waitress who served lunch yesterday for the Heatons
Jazz Appreciation Society’s annual bash. She was professional – as in polite
and efficient – but lacked the friendliness or willingness to engage personally.
Perhaps she saw only a dozen white, middle-class, old men and was unable or
unwilling to take the trouble to distinguish one from another. OK, Boomer?
However, there are measures that
older men can take to ward off the prejudices of the young. Appearances can
help. Don’t fall into a lazy habit of dress that says, “I don’t give a toss
anymore”. Stay sharp but dignified. Be individual but don’t ape fashions that
are inappropriate either to your age or your shape. When you finally donated
your office clothes to the charity shop, you should also have reappraised the leisurewear
that you bought in the 80s and replaced it with something less risible – if you
wish to be taken seriously in your third age.
It is more difficult to command
respect on the phone, however, as I have just discovered. I received an electricity
bill which, being twice the amount that I was expecting, caused me to engage
with the provider, Eon. I had two online ‘chats’ and two protracted phone
conversations, all of them inconclusive and unsatisfactory in so far as I still
could not understand how they had arrived at the total. Eventually, it was discovered
(by me) that the meter is malfunctioning. Nevertheless, the next I heard from
Eon was a solicitous email informing me that I have been placed on their Priority
Services Register, a list of people who have lost their faculties and can
no longer read meters or comprehend bills. I suspect it’s their way of saying,
“Welcome to your fourth age”.
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