TALKING 'BOUT MY GENERATION....

I noticed something about four weeks ago. People whom I met would stop 10 feet away cock their head on one side and murmur “how are you dear?” And as I bellowed that I was tremendously well they’d shake their head pityingly and walk away saying “do take care”.

If you are over 70, you’re  going to die and probably quite soon. Grey hair is a giveaway like a facial rash of livid red spots once was. That’s why I’m thinking about buying a Harley Davidson. To make a point.

This iconic and successful brand in the early days thought its sales success was owing to hairy biker and ravers like Pete Townshend (the Who – now 74). But research showed the most important purchasers were middle-aged accountants who wanted to drive noisily through towns, crouched over the handlebars, frightening people.

The Government is thinking of easing the lockdown in cohorts ending with the 70+ and those who are very vulnerable until well, possibly Autumn 2021, when a vaccine may be available.
I’ve always deplored antisemitism (or racism of any kind). But I’m now a victim of ageism and I don’t like it. (“Don’t you dear? Sit down – you’ll feel better.”)

I particularly deplored an article by Philip Collins in the Times who advanced the argument roughly thus: we boomers had, through house price-inflation achieved extreme wealth  through doing nothing and should jolly well move out, give back the money and go into a care home.

Sorry Philip …I struggle for the right word . Not sure but I think it’s bollocks.

We are the same age as the US President, his likely opponent in the forthcoming Presidential election and the Pope. Warren Buffett for goodness sake  is 89 and he’s not exactly a slouch.

We must look at history to see what our lazy generation achieved.  In 1959 our Prime minister Harold MacMillan said “you’ve never had it so good”. But let’s face it the bar was very low.

We were pretty well bankrupt.
Top of the Hit Parade was a piano piece by Russ Conway called “Side Saddle”.
Our banking sector was fragmented and parochial.
Advertising was controlled by the Americans.
The money spent on house improvement, self-improvement, fashion and fitness was negligible.

But things changed. We spent wealth we earned on improving things. Here’s a glimpse of the growth post 1959 we achieved.

Output adjusted for inflation and measured in 2013 prices

World leaders in advertising,  creative writing, comedy and in  theatre,  (briefly) in fashion, world leaders in grocery retailing, European leaders in banking, global top capital city, top football league our Premier Division, four of the world’s top universities and in civilisation.

Don’t say we were lazy. The last half century has been the sweatiest and most creative in our history.
Today we are back, maybe nearer to 1959 than we’d like to believe. The new generation has to do what we did all over again.

Hopefully with our help - unless we’ve been put in care homes of course.

This could be an adventure. And we know how to do it…..because we’ve done it.

WHAT'S IT LIKE BEING OLDER?

Edward Lucas in the Times last week described how his present of a digital radio for his ageing mother was useless because it was complex and simply too difficult for arthritic fingers. He urged designers to be more empathetic. I think it was George Orwell who said being a fit 75 felt like being 25 with a bad dose of flu….but with a curiously clear head. It’s just moving that hurts.

Here’s what I used to do when it was young:

And here’s what that would feel like now:

To have a sense of what old feels like try these and you’ll get the idea: put on dried old gardening gauntlets and try to pick things up. Try wearing dark glasses covered in grease and you’ll get the idea of how your vision is disturbed. Put cotton wool in your ears whilst playing an episode of the Archers just  below audible level but loud enough to be distracting. Wear a vest two sizes too small so it pinches with a tennis ball sellotaped between your shoulder blades. Wear extra baggy trousers which are a size too big with a belt so tight it’s hard to breathe. Wear a pair of shoes with pebbles in them – one shoe should be a size bigger than you normally wear and the other a size smaller. Tie your shoelaces together with a two foot shoelace.  Hit your left kneecap sharply with a small hammer three times every half hour. Wear a travel pillow round your neck so you can’t turn your head.

Now drink two large glasses of Australian Shiraz (it’ll make you cheerful but slightly drunk and forgetful). Make sure you have and retain a very full bladder.

OK I’m trowelling it on a bit but we are, all of us, a little intolerant of those older and less well than us, forever resisting the urge to say “pull yourself together.”

There are upsides of course. Finding oneself able to take a generous-minded long term view. Being listened to when you talk about the past although one young man said when I spoke of the 1950s said “no it wasn’t like that. I should know because I studied it for A level”. But best of all you have an obsession about being punctual, being prepared, seeing the bright-side and being more thoughtful. An aching body aches less when you think more.

The fastest growing cohorts in the UK and USA are 65+ but it’s odd that most marketing and product innovation effort goes to the 20-40 year olds (13.3million in the UK) and hardly any to the 65+ of us (12.2million).

Aged 27                                      Aged 84

Here’s what Sophia Loren said:
“There is a fountain of youth.
 It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

Attagirl.

AM I A STATISTICAL FREAK?

As I age and ache, that saying comes to mind that being an old (ish) man, even on a good day, feels not much different from being a young (ish) man except that young man is feeling rather unwell.  But it’s the mind I want to focus on. We are supposed to become more conservative,  more prone to live in the past and more averse to loss as the years pass.

Almost 50% of Conservative Party voters in the UK are over 65 and only 16% of those under 35 say they’ll vote conservative. By rights I should be joining my cohort but….but…. as the years pass I’m getting more left wing.  The Wedgewood Benn in me has, suddenly, like something from ‘The Alien’ leapt snarling from my body. Only it isn’t snarling, it’s full of good humour, just a little anti-capitalist. I  sat in church on Sunday listening to the hymn “Glorious Things of thee are Spoken” with that couplet about the overly rich and smug:

“Fading is the worldling’s pleasure, 
 All his boasted pomp and show”.

The Christians have always known how to smack the rich, them and their “boasted pomp and blasted yachts”. But it isn’t just their “boasted pomp”; more importantly it’s their extreme right-wing Toryness that alienates me.

Alistair Campbell has, meanwhile,  lost his home in Labour who, in turn,  seem to have lost their political minds according to Matthew Goodwin’s article “The Strange Death of Labour” in the Sunday Times.  We slightly further right of Alistair and wondering where our political home might be are facing, like Tennyson’s Light Brigade (misquoted):

“Idiots to the right of us
Idiots to the left of us
Idiots in front to us” 

 I am spending my days frustrated by homelessness, poverty, official attitudes to migrants and the problems suffered in Northern Africa, the tragic decline in manners (stop shuffling Donald Trump. We respect your office but you are very naughty),  the dislocation of a significant number of young children – posing knife threats but worse than that in the long term. We have become a richer, smarter, more excluding and less kind society and that makes me sad.

We‘ve stopped caring enough about the big issues. This “Withdrawal Agreement” has not been a big issue at all - just a fatally misunderstood “preliminary” agreement. We shall have to learn new skills like listening and doing coalition well. The old votes and tribal loyalties are dead. John Scott – the mediator - said this about our world:

“In this increasingly complex, kick-arse, hurtling, over-provided world most people want a simpler life.”

Hurray for simplicity.

And that is just what Clement Attlee described:

“(No) differences arose between Conservatives, Labour and Liberals ….in the War Cabinet … not in the big things. ... 

When one came to work out solutions … one had to …disregard private interests.  But there was no opposition from Conservative Ministers. They accepted the practical solution whatever it was.”

That’s all we ask.

DRINKING: NOT AS BAD AS FIRST THOUGHT

Who needs champagne when there was the astonishingly wonderful weather of Easter weekend? As the sun beamed down on the beaches of Brighton it was as though all the miseries of Brexit  - the hokey-cokey story– “in-out-in-out-shake-it-all-about” – had been erased . And anyway during the week it dawned on me that this Brexit stress was not actually what it was all about.

A study, from the National Institute on Ageing and the National Institutes of Health, suggests even small daily stress factors can lead to health problems later in life. What about “big daily stresses”? Because I have rarely seen such disaffection as now.

According to work done recently at the University of Bristol there’s an alarmingly high incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease amongst young adults in the UK. The startling insight of this study is that the liver diseases normally associated with hitting the bottle may instead be brought about by stress in the young. I was so concerned by this that I had to have a glass of wine.

We live uncertainly in a stressful world. And it’s not just Brexit. It’s not just terrorist attacks. It’s about something rather more in our own control. The complexity and crowdedness of our lives today. Technology is remarkable in  its cleverness.  But the creativity of people creating apps that solve problems we didn’t know we actually had, creates stress.  And stress leads to liver disease.

I don’t want to sound like a dinosaur although I’m afraid I am one. I was born into a pre digital world and I cannot honestly say that WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or even Amazon have necessarily transformed my life for the better. When I’m travelling my Kindle allows me to carry a library but actually reading a real book printed on crisp new paper in a nice font that smells of “new book” is still an unbeatable experience. As is writing a real letter on Basildon Bond using my poor ignored Mont Blanc full of Quink.

Our world is crammed with “solutions”. We have eating solutions, logistic solutions, accommodation solutions, clothing solutions, health solutions or, ultimately, solution solutions. We don’t need solutions (which presuppose problems) we need simplifications and less choice.

Libby Purves following that long, languorous Easter weekend, speculated on the large number of people who’d be saying they wanted to get away from it all. I can hear them:
“let’s sell up, take a camper van, go through France stopping wherever takes our fancy, eat chunks of fresh bread lying next to a bubbling stream,  quaffing local wine from the bottle and watching white fluffy clouds scud across the deep blue sky.”

I know people who did just that. They came back,  said it had been fun at first….but not after a while. Too many bloody fluffy clouds. You can’t turn back the clock. Dinosaurs die but until they do let’s stop submitting meekly to technology that’s not a solution just stress inducing.

Cheers.