In praise of old timers

Thanks to the New York Times for bringing this new blog site to our eyes, demonstrating the different ways seniors live now at Brave Old World Its a site worth several visits.

According to NYT “This summer, 10 fellows at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism reported on a graying nation for News21, a national initiative to promote innovation in journalism. The results included these video portraits of the many ways older Americans live, from an off-the-grid couple felling trees in rural Montana to a woman who requires assistance to leave her nursing home bed each morning. Find more of the fellows’ multimedia work at their Web site, Brave Old World “

Call me an old fuddy-duddy if you like, but I really don’t like giving my grandkids plastic toys or big cuddly animal things stuffed with foam. I’d rather give them toys made from a natural product

Sure, plastic and foam toys look bright and colourful, and make noises guaranteed to drive parents mad, but there’s too much wrong with them on the negative side of the ledger.

There’s little emotional involvement involved with these toys, except greed of possession.

Comparatively, they are poor value for money. They don’t last long. People who give plastic and foam as gifts or bribes seem to believe the bigger the box, the happier the child will be The novelty of the surprise soon wears off, and the kids are looking for the next big box to rip open.

There’s no sensible way of getting rid of all this juvenile flotsam and jetsam when it has passed its two weeks use-by date.

Charity shops will take some, a few. Many of them are too broken to be saleable, or carry so much baby dribble Mum doesn’t want to risk catching a neighborhood baby virus. Most will end up discarded and dumped.

Drive along any street on any garage sale day, and see piles of plastic that’s selling for pennies, or heaps of cuddly toys with one eye and an ear missing and no longer worth a hug.

What about reputable useful stuff like Lego? And surely companies like Mattel are PR conscious enough to think of safety first with children.

Well, I have a paranoid distrust of their plastic toys

When the kids are young, everything goes into their mouths and is chewed, experimentally. Rip the arm off a new doll, and pop it into your mouth, is standard operating procedure for kids.

In chewing and sucking the toys, chemical additives can often leech out of the plastic – into the kiddie.

What kind of plastic has been used in these toys, and what sort of additives are in the plastic? . Often the distributor of the toy doesn’t know exactly how it is made, or won’t tell us buyers, in case we get confused.

Known additives have included pthalates,  but also lead and cadmium, and as vinyl breaks down, this toxic stuff leaches.

Some adult plastic items carry a little triangle symbol surrounding a number, which indicates the type of plastic used. With toys, its rafferty’s rules (no rules at all). With these labels on the plastic, we could, perhaps make an educated guess on the degree of risk hidden in the toy – when we know were to find an explanation for the numerical symbols.

Meanwhile, I want to give my grandkids a wooden top or a wool doll.

Max was loved – by a lot of people

He was a devoted husband, friend and partner to Mary, a close and caring father to Rebecca, John and Nicholas – and Tracy, Jane and Wendy. He was a loving grandfather who thoroughly enjoyed the company of all of our young ones, especially Melanie, Darcy, Riley, Georgina and Anastasia.

He was a wise uncle, a loyal friend and a trustworthy comrade

At sea, off Queensland coast, 1945-05-03. Lieutenant-commander j.i. Moore, (1), in the paymasters' office aboard the troopship HMAS Kanimbla, with able seaman J.M. Belchamber, (2).

With service in the merchant navy as a young man, Max took his place in the wartime fleet which kept Australia supplied with essential goods, under conditions that were continuously dangerous. His job as a communications officer meant that he was a key player in getting ships and crew safely to their ports.

Max had great communications skills, he was a good listener and had printer’s ink in his blood.

While he set lead for the day’s news, at the same time Max corrected grammar, edited spelling mistakes and saved many now famous journalists and editors from printing embarrassing mistakes.

As a child, I visited Max at his work a few times, and saw the monster machines he operated with ease, as he produced the lead slugs for the paper. To my small eyes, those machines were like dragons Max had tamed.

I’m sure that Max’s skills and pride in doing a job as the best as it could be done, set me and others, on a path for getting-things-right. Even today, I can’t write a letter to Forrest Avenue without checking to see if there are errors that would immediately catch Max’s eye.

My earliest memories of Max, even before he and Mary were married include sitting behind him on his motor bike. This was superman, I thought.

I also remember him showing me a sword, a very big sword. I can tell you, I decided then and there, I was never going to miss-behave around an uncle with a motorbike and a sword.

Max enjoyed life – especially when good food, and fine red wine were included – He enjoyed time with his close family, time with his extended family, time with his many loyal friends. He was always there for us.

Max had a sharp memory, a mind full of wonderful human details — like the name of his butcher 40 years ago
He loved to tell a story, and when he spun a yarn, he left us wanting more.

Today, we would all like more of Max.

I imagine him half opening one eye and saying “ I’m still listening”.

Only two weeks into retirement, and already I have discovered great joy being unshackled from business time and Daylight Saving Time and other routines.

All my working life I have run to the beat of another clock, like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, clockwatching from 5.30 am till lights out, always driven by the thought that “Time is Money”.

I would wake up by the alarm clock, spend a day driven by rosters, schedules, appointments, timetables and meetings that overlapped. Try to race the clock to meet deadlines, cram more into each hour to meet ‘key performance indicators’ set by a faceless cost accountant and keep a record of billable time in 6 minute divisions. Eat by the clock, go to bed early so I’d be fit the race again tomorrow. No more

Now, if I want to stay up all night to finish reading a good book, that’s OK; I don’t have to get out of bed till I wake.  I can sleep-in till 7.30, or 8.30 or even 9.30 if its cold outside. I can eat when I am hungry, not when it’s lunch time. I can work at my own pace. If I’m late for a meeting I can phone and say “Start without me”.

More importantly I can pick and choose my own work. I have piles of work to be done – jobs I put at low priority when Time was Money, promising myself to do them “when I retired”.

Jobs like sorting out all the photos accumulated in a box, projects like learning more Greek language, tasks like repainting the flat, plans like sorting out all the magazines I’ve stored to read when have the time. There’s still tax to do, banks to scold, doctor’s waiting rooms to sit around in for an hour after the time allocated.

I don’t know why they call this The Golden Years. I spent the first two weeks of retirement making lists of all the duties and odd jobs that I’ve hoarded for retirement. Now I am sorting them into priorities, and setting target dates for their completion. These go into my daily ‘To Do’ lists in the calendar. Days aren’t long enough. This time they have to be done, I don’t get a third chance.

If you want me to spend some fun time with you, you’ll need to make an appointment.

Alright, I confess. I was a little wet eyed when I drove out of the gates at work for the last time yesterday. There were good people, friends still chained to their desks, to their collar-and-ties, and their power walks. There had been good times. Some good results were on the scoreboard.

It was a double whammy. I accepted a redundancy, meaning the job I did has been declared ‘excess to requirements’. But at age 70, the reality is that now I am also facing retirement.

No longer a wage slave, now a pension slave.

Still I’m in good company. There’s great populations of peoples who have retired, been made redundant or fired. And they still have as many skills as those left on the job. They just don’t have the same value in dead-wood land. Perhaps we should start our own political party. There’s strength in numbers.

Being retired will be a foreign country for me. I am going to have to learn a new language, one without acronyms, cliches and business speak. As a refugee from the work force I will have to learn a new culture, a new economy, new dress code. I need to learn to deal with new prejudices – those against the aged. I will need to adjust my expectations and keep my history private.

I intend to find the best I can in this new world, just like those other refugees arriving by rickety boats when they step ashore in their new adopted lands.

Alzheimer’s and Dementia amongst the elderly is a growth industry.

Fear of forgetting, and of being forgotten, are at epidemic proportions.

I find it hard to open a newspaper or listen to the radio, without some flushed new warning that bad habits will kill the last few memory cells still active in my skull. Then there are the state wide alerts that some fellow oldie has gone for a walk without trousers, and forgotten the way home again, to act as a parable for the future that lies ahead for me.

There are hundreds of tweets every hour on Twitter, all in a rush and flutter to bring the latest scientific discovery of brains falling apart or therapy to make us happier in our dotage, in case the idea of the unavoidable dementia industry slips our attention.

There are nurses, and respite homes and consultants and therapists and web sites and fundraisers and bankers by the score, with advice and books and brain exercises, reaching out to sons, daughters, husbands and wives who think the older member of the family has already lost their memory, or that known intelligence may be in the process of fading quickly.

All the serious warnings seem to suggest that I am likely to go ga-ga as I grow older. Memory will slowly slip away, first the names of things, then how to do up my fly-buttons, then recognition of family members, till there is nothing left behind my eyes. With some oldies it doesn’t happen. Their minds are said to be ‘as sharp as a tack’ while their bodies slowly wither.

How will I know if I am starting to lose my memory. If I’ve forgotten something, then what is there to remind me of what I’ve forgotten except the nagging and tut-tutting of carers.

This blog entry was first published in 3rdAct. I thought it was so good I wrote to freelance author Jaime O’Neill for permission to republish here.

Three men are seated at the table next to me in one of those serve-yourself-continental-breakfast rooms of the kind found in most airport hotels. When the oldest of the three—a man nearing retirement age—excuses himself to go the men’s room, the two younger guys exchange snide comments about their absent colleague.

“He’s past it,” one of them sneers, though when the older man returns, they smile at him deferentially.

It is a small moment, but the words return to memory several times that day because I, too, am “past it.” As a recent retiree, I am past lots of things that used to sully my days.

I’m past the necessity of having to go out and scuffle with people who are often insincere in their dealings with other people.

I am past having to attend stultifying meetings conducted mostly so other people can justify their jobs.

I am past worrying about whether someone is going to judge me about the way I am dressed, the way I speak, or the ideas I come up with.

I am past having my future determined by other people’s idle opinions of me.

I’m past needing to listen to the inane opinions of workplace “superiors.” Generally speaking, I’m past the idea of superiors entirely, having seen enough of people in positions of authority to disabuse me of the idea that positions confer substantive superiority on anyone.

With a modest though dependable retirement income, I am past all fear of alienating someone who could end my employment, or put a negative rap on my abilities and thus stifle my aspirations for new employment.

Never again will I face a job interview in which other people sit in judgment, determining from their secure positions just how adequate I might be for the work they need done. And I’m past having to scour the want ads for work.

I’m past the need to make nice to people I don’t want to see, and I’m past the need to hasten to work on days when I’m not feeling well. I am also past those awkward moments on the phone, calling in sick, with the certain feeling that the person taking my call assumes that I’m malingering.

I still have a functioning libido, thank you very much, but my sex drive is now on cruise control, and no longer likely to get me in trouble. I do not suffer from any of the ailments lumped under the heading of “erectile dysfunction,” and that includes those dysfunctions that proved so embarrassing back when I was an adolescent and had to deal with an oversupply of functionality.

I’m past worries about how my life might turn out, or how I will turn out, or what degree of success I’m going to have.

I’m past giving thought to the size or price of the home I own, or if the number of square feet under my roof is more or less than the number of square feet anyone else lives under, or makes mortgage payments on.

I’m also past worrying about style, or about the kind of statement my car makes, just so long as it gets me where I’m going. I’m past concerning myself with the thousand things I was told I needed to worry about if I was going to be accepted in polite or impolite society. 

Most of all, I’m past the time when I lacked the time to pause before a glorious sunset, to dawdle over breakfast, or to linger while I listened to a beautiful song. I’m past much of what worried me and most of what hurried me, and it feels a lot like the wisdom I was told I’d have if I was granted the years necessary to get past it in the first place.

When people speak of  ‘Cougars’ – woman who have a relationship with younger men – I think “ So what; good on them!”

It’s taken some older women and young men more than forty years to catch onto the 1965 message  of Stephen Vizenczey’s classic novel of apprenticeship:  In Praise of Older Women: the Amorous Recollections of Andras Vajda.

The narrator of the story refuses to look on women as his enemies, and decides to rid himself of his sexual illiteracy by learning from those women who know that being born years apart is not necessarily a barrier to sex or friendship.

Vajda relates a succession of his teenage and young adult life encounters with married, middle-aged women in their thirties and forties, in Hungary, Italy, and Canada,

Perhaps a part of the story’s success is that it shines with good spirit, in contrast to other dreary despondent warnings against dangers of older women, published around the same time.

‘In praise of older women’ was published two years before the film ‘The Graduate’ was released. Staring Dustin Hoffman The Graduate tells of young Benjamin, who has a summer affair with Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft) , the wife of his father’s business partner. Its a film perhaps more remembered for its music than its Hollywood moral, which portrays the older woman as a predator.

‘In Praise of older women’ is a conversation about age, as much as about sex. The voices of a twenty something, and women in their middle age, influenced a whole generation of well adjusted men and women.

I was about the same age as Andras when I read the book. Happily, I worked with some ‘older’ women who seemed to be quite generous helping a young novice understand their more adult points of views.

Today, as an aging man, I still enjoy the company of woman who are older than I am. Thanks, I think, to the influence of Stephen Vizenczey’s book and like Andras, to older friends I met along the way

The book is said to have reached five million readers since its first appearance .There have been more than forty-four reprints of the English-language edition; The story has twice been told in film, in 1978 and 1997

If I believe the politicians and statisticians and caring profession, the world is about to drown in feeble, ill, old folk.

When I talk to the old folk, say ” How ya goin’”, they mightn’t admit (except to their doctors) they have a thing wrong with them.

I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The most recent Health Survey for ­England ­(2005) suggests that the most commonly declared state of health, for any of the five age groups between 65 and death, is “no reported problems”. That is, ” no reported problems”.

More than half of both men and women aged 65 and over said their health was ‘good’ or ‘very good’ (57% of men and 55% of women). Have a look at this chart:

Are we healthy  AND  happy? Probably not.

Geriatric depression scale

The health survey in the UK, 2005, used a 10-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS10) for the first time, for informants aged 65 and over, using a self completed questionnaire booklet. The questionnaire consisted of ten questions, which investigated depressive symptoms such as feeling unhappy, feeling empty, helpless, or hopeless. A score of three or more depressive symptoms was defined as a high GDS10 score.

The prevalence of high GDS10 scores was related to self-reported general health: 6% of men and 8% of women reporting very good health had high GDS10 scores, compared with 71%  and 79% respectively among those reporting very bad health. That’s hardly surprising.

Here’s the picture for of the data, showing that people who felt worse, were unhappier. Isn’t science wonderful:

This must NOT be taken as a downer, it is simply my wish to keep you in line with what I am thinking.

 Next week I will get the second of a three monthly series of hormone injection, a series estimated to last for five years.

This week I must rush around to organize another blood test, to see if the hormone treatment I have been receiving for the past four months for prostate cancer has had any affect. Will the PSA level of 83 from three months ago be higher, lower or the same?

So far I haven’t noticed any great change. No mood swings, I think. The hormone treatment certainly has induced hot flushes. They’re a buggar. I am tired easily.  I have noticed my pee doesn’t smell as sweet as it used to, I’ll ask the doctor about this. Apart from those changes, I haven’t found a need to be too introspective.

I think that I am neutral about this test, probably curious is the best description.

 I have found that an extract from Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America And The World, by Barbara Ehrenreich, to be published by Granta on 14 January is probably in line with my views and emotions about this treatment. She is writing about her experiences with breast cancer, which is probably a bit more serious than my condition. I will certainly want to read the whole work when it is published, and see what it can offer my thinking.

The extract can be read on the Guardian website, at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/02/cancer-positive-thinking-barbara-ehrenreich

Her other writings get pretty good reviews