#30 THIRTY IS THE NEW TWELVE

BE YOUR AGE. This used to be said to children by their parents who thought they were being, well, childish: regressing to an earlier stage, doing stuff they should have grown out of, by their age. Now it’s more likely to be said by children and teenagers to their parents: Embarrassing Dad who still wears his favourite flares (and sees nothing wrong in that – there’s plenty of wear in them yet) or Mum who shows up at Parents’ Evening with way too much cleavage, in an outfit more suitable for clubbing. These are common things and harmless: learning to deal with excruciating embarrassment verging on humiliation is an important Life Lesson for young people. It’s a small repayment for the number of times they’ve done it to you, The Parent – who they’d like to disappear when their friends are around.

More concerning is the trend for full maturity to be postponed
 longer and longer as adults cling on to childish things with ever 
greater desperation. Have you seen 39 year-old men on skate-
boards, with the obligatory Stussy gear, baseball caps reversed, 
celebrating their youth?  

Or huge muscled guys, balancing on BMXs, so small they'd be spurned by circus clowns and midgets? Ridiculous. Almost as bad as the other extreme: very elderly men, often with walking sticks, shuffling their way across pedestrian crossings, more arthritic than athletic, wearing gleaming go-fasta trainers. Yes I know they're

more comfortable, but they're plain silly on people who are having trouble walking let alone sprinting.‘Twas ever thus? Kids want to be teenagers and have their privileges; seniors just want to be younger and not have their ailments, but it’s today’s 30+s who are most desperate to cling on to a distant youth.  Skateboards and roller-blades, BMX acrobatics, why not buy a Chopper and be the coolest kid on the block….at 45?

Now for the minefield: I have to say the unsayable. Harry Potter is for children. Yes, it’s true. I know this is sacrilege second only to libelling The Queen, but someone’s got to say it.  I speak with all the expertise of someone who has read none of the books, and seen none of the films, save for a trailer. I have nothing against JK, and salute her persistence through 50+ rejections before getting published. The sales figures for her children’s books rebuke any criticism. But when mature adults make a thing out of reading them on the Tube and squealing with delight, I draw a personal line. There is something about it which is uncomfortable for others. To me, when your life is such that you need to escape it in children’s fantasy fiction, one should consider getting a therapist not a book franchise. Re-live your childhood reading your favourite books to your children or your pupils. Relegate Hogwash from your reading list: there must be one or two books for grown-ups you haven’t read….. possibly more.

Of course, all these thing are harmless – just a bit irritating. I'm not suggesting that these people suffer from arrested development, just an attachment to childhood things which makes others feel slightly uncomfortable: like going out to play poker and someone suggesting Snap instead. 

Why can’t we just ‘be our age’?  Get some distance from childhood, and perspective. Declare that 'in my youth I looked a lot better and behaved a lot worse". Embrace the present, like it, live it to the max, not hanker for the past or wish it away. Living in the moment should be cherished, not the past or the future. 

Naturally I am totally wrong about all this and many thousands of adults all over the world have derived enormous innocent pleasure from these books PLUS I've lost many of my friends. Careless!

ARE YOU OLD?  Are you intending to become old? Are you clicking on now because you don’t want to think about it? There are things you should know. Old age is not a neutral demographic category: it is a passport to devaluation. You are about to become a stereotype.....

 The Zimmer frame is every lazy comedian’s standby prop for jokes about the elderly; strangely appropriate as it is indeed a prop to stand by. It is a fit-for-purpose, aluminium stereotype which so perfectly encapsulates old age, that it has become a substitute for thought or description, a trigger word which says it all.  The Zimmer crucifies the elderly, it is the graphic and indelible image of age and infirmity. It is a true stereotype, a generalisation from the few to the many, for very few are ever actually seen.

The common denominator of ageing is loss: loss of memory, hair, hearing, vision, teeth, muscular strength, mobility, independence, friends and social life, income, and obviously loss of physical functionality as disease and sheer wear and tear take their toll. This grim catalogue might be accepted without comment: but it should not, because in itself it is an outrageous stereotype, deliberately so. There is not an elderly person alive who will suffer all of these, - and almost none who will escape all of them. The majority will endure some, but all elderly people will suffer the effects of the stereotype in which all these ‘losses’ aggregate.

Nothing is more prone to stereotyping than the graphic image. Partly it’s an editorial problem in that a lot of information, preferably simple, stark, vivid and highly recognisable has got to be crammed into a small space for people to instantly ‘read’ and understand.  Cut to the design studio:

We’ve got this commission to design a new road sign for ‘elderly people crossing’. What do you think?

I’m thinking, walking sticks, mobility scooters or wheelchairs, lollipop ladies stopping the traffic, it’s quite difficult to do the age thing isn’t it. So much easier in colour, you could just dress the old boy in a mushroom-coloured car coat and everything else in shades of brown.

Sure. Why don’t we make it a couple, and have the little old lady helping the hubby. Then it makes it clear that it’s both genders and doesn’t exclude anyone, and it’s a BOGOF. Here, like this…

But why have you made them both bent? That’s not very likely, is it?

Let’s not be too purist: the sign is a triangle, if they were upright they’d be out of the frame!

Old age is bad enough. But to be seen as represented by these doddering old people crossing the road is unkind, tactless, insulting and simply unrepresentative of the vast majority of over 70s. The baby boomer generation, soon coming up to this threshold, who have had difficulty in persuading themselves that they are over 25, will be particularly resistant to this kind of iconography. Mass excursions to Dignitas would be far preferable.

Of course the graphics of old age is not the main event, just a superficial irritant. The ‘loss-list’, of real, tangible decrements in the quality of living seem to be inevitable – in some shape or form -  and would have looked much more ominous 50 years ago than they do now. Advances in surgery, medical science and drug therapies have brought some of these complaints into the realm of curable or manageable conditions. Joint replacements, transplants, corneal and cataract surgery and almost invisible hearing aids, have changed the landscape for older people, and will go on doing so. That research and development will continue, if only because of commercial imperatives. 

What we should be equally concerned with are the social and domestic aspects of old age. For it is these aspects which old people have the most concern about themselves, whether we are talking about a lonely and isolated existence, dangerously far from family or other help, or the unlucky dip of care-home care, or don’t care home. Enough has been written about these things, but let’s suppose that for the elderly person their priorities for living accommodation are (not in order of priority)  warmth, safety, economic viability, proximity to family, bit of garden, independence, social life.

What if Government/local government provided cash grants/tax breaks to builders/individuals to construct houses with an extra floor (or semi-basement) to provide a ‘granny-flat’ on the premises?

Firstly, the capital sum would be recouped within 1-2 years (max) from savings on residential care home fees, which are astronomical.

Secondly, such houses would provide an independent flat, not just for an elderly parent, but at other times:  (a) for letting during periods of unemployment/ pregnancy etc when income was reduced (b) for use by older teenagers and ‘stay-at-home’ university students, reducing stress in the household.

Finally, when necessary, the older person would have an independent base, near to family for company, help and care, the ideal balance of nearness and self-directed living. Of course, where these developments took place in newbuild properties, a community of older people would be created simultaneously.

Are you listening, Jeremy? This is an economically viable policy which ticks many boxes.

1)     WIGS,  TOUPÉES AND HAIRPIECES 

      

      These never look completely right, as they move away from the skin at the neck or ears, and then stay in that position till the wearer notices and adjusts them. Then there is the fantasy problem: on ordering the new rug, the purchaser gets carried away and sees it as a passport back to youth. Suddenly the years are peeled away by a thick thatch of a deep chestnut colour: ‘the way we were’. The effect is improbable for those who knew his iron grey tonsure, indeed some wisps of that very hue are creeping out from under the new toupée to remind us of the contrast. A quiet word to wearers: people always know.....

2)     DYEING:  too black is the new black. 

      How many times do we spoil a piece of DIY work by applying one brushstroke too many, one pass of the plane, one too many chisel cuts – and spoil the whole thing? It’s the same with hair dyeing. Mission Control says eradicate all the grey and so they start to do so, before realising that as soon as one part is a suitably deep colour, this becomes the a gold standard for the rest. And so every silver hair has to be pursued mercilessly across the whole scalp, held down and dyed repeatedly to within an inch of its life. The net effect: A faultless vista of jet black hair, uninterrupted by any other colour or even variation of shade. A head of hair never before viewed on a human being at the age of 21, let alone 55. It would be a kindness to put these vain fools in Room 101, at least while this liquidised raven-feather look grows out.  Sometimes black is not beautiful.

Distinguished grey becomes black beret: Jon Sopel

                                 
 Some words from the late, great, lamented Victoria Wood:

I haven't got a waist. I've just got a sort of place, a bit like an unmarked level crossing.

Radio killed variety and TV killed radio, and the internet will kill television and it will go on and on. 

Sexual harassment at work... is it a problem for the self-employed?

  I know I've got a degree. Why does that mean I have to spend my life with intellectuals? I've got a life-saving certificate but I don't spend my evenings diving for a rubber brick with my pyjamas on. 

Five of many stunning photos taken by friend and Brighton photographer, Dominic Dibbs.