Saturday, 1 February 2020

Stages and Ages


          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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